“Somewhere we will not be overheard,” said Chandar as they stopped before a chamber sealed by a fibrous membrane.
“Here are stored many Urman artefacts that I have found, lost in undergrowth or left in caves over many spinnings,” said Chandar. “Indications of how Urmen lived before the Ones subsumed them. Maybe in return you can enlighten me as to the nature of some of them.”
“Yes, yes,” muttered Jeffries dismissively. He had no interest in the old Chatt’s collection of archaeology, almost certainly a fusty amateur assortment of broken pottery, arrowheads, flints and bone jewellery with no context and less meaning. No, Croatoan was his only concern now. The need overwhelmed him. He fought the desire to take the Chatt by the shoulders and shake the information out of it there and then, and watched impatiently as it exhaled a mist from its mouthparts, in response to which, the door shrivelled open. Chandar stepped through and beckoned Jeffries to do likewise. Preoccupied, Jeffries stepped into the chamber totally unprepared for what lay inside.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ATKINS KNELT IN the short stretch of tunnel. Before him the stack of equipment he was passing through to the others barred his way. Eager to be inside himself, he gave the last of it, Mercy’s mysterious tarpaulin covered thing, a last shove with his heel, and it fell down into the passage with a dull metallic clang.
“For Christ’s sake, Only, watch it!” hissed Mercy as Atkins dropped down into the passage after it.
The passage itself was about six feet high, four feet wide and rounded, almost as if it had been burrowed rather than built. A faint draft of air was blowing towards them down its length.
Everson nodded and Sergeant Hobson walked cautiously into the breeze until he disappeared around a gentle curve ahead.
Along the length of the curving passage small recesses were stuffed with some sort of glowing lichen that imparted a dull but diffuse blue-white light.
Mercy crouched down to inspect the damage to his bundle.
“How are we doing, Evans?” asked Everson.
Mercy glanced up at Everson and nodded.
“So what the hell is this mysterious thing we’ve lugged all the way, sir?” asked Porgy.
With a broad grin and the flair of a showman, Mercy flung back the tarpaulin.
“The Lieutenant thought we’d need a bit of an edge. An’ I found one, didn’t I, in the remains of that Jerry sap. Isn’t it a beauty? Am I good or am I good?”
“Bugger me!” said Gutsy. “It’s a flammin’ Hun Flammenwerfer.”
Mercy grinned and nodded slowly. “Oh yes. After what I saw them Chatts do when they raided our trenches I think a little payback is due, don’t you?”
“What is it?” asked Poilus.
“A liquid fire thrower,” said Atkins, in awe.
“Bloody hell,” said Gazette, in a low voice.
“Them Chatts’ll get what’s coming to ’em now,” Mercy said with a sneer.
“If it works,” said Half Pint.
“Tell you what,” hissed Mercy, “you look down the barrel and tell me if you see a spark.”
“I was just sayin’,” said Half Pint.
“Yeah, well don’t come looking to me next time you want a light for your Woodie, is all I’m sayin’.”
“Quiet!” hissed Everson as Sergeant Hobson returned.
“Tunnel leads to a broader one up ahead. I can hear voices beyond,” he reported.
“Right,” said Everson. “Poilus, you’re sure this scent trick will work?”
“For a while,” said the Urman.
“Let’s hope so.” He nodded to Hobson. “Carry on, Sergeant.”
“We’re not anticipating trouble going in, so long as this insect stink continues to do its work. Chances are we’re going to have to fight our way out though, so save your puff and your ammo. Atkins, you’re bayonet man with me. Hopkiss and Blood, bombs. Evans and Nicholls, you take the damned flammenwerfer.”
“But Sarn’t,” Half Pint began.
“It takes two to operate,” explained Mercy. “I can’t reach the fire lever. You have to do it for me.”
“Ketch and Jellicoe, you’re on mop-up. Poilus, you stick with them,” said Hobson. “Otterthwaite, you take the rear with the Lieutenant. Move out.”
As they set off, all encumbered not only by their own equipment but also by the sacks of rifles, grenades, Lewis MGs and ammunition they were carrying for the others, Atkins began to feel the old familiar dread he’d felt in the mines as a guard.
The miners dug tunnels deep underground, far out under the German positions in order to plant high explosives. It was hot, cramped and dirty work, even more so if you didn’t like confined spaces with little air. And God forbid you should think of the thousands of tons of earth above, constantly being shelled. Then there were the Germans who would be doing the same. It was a game of cat and mouse hundreds of feet below the peppered surface of No Man’s Land. Sat breathless in a listening alcove trying to determine where the Hun was. Too close and you could hear them digging and they could hear you. Occasionally you’d accidentally break through into a German shaft and then, oh God then, the close fighting, the fear of grenades and being buried or cut off from escape by a tunnel collapse.
“You all right, Atkins?”
“What?”
“I said you all right?” asked Hobson as they advanced.
“Yes sir, just remembering something.”
“Once we start killing these Chatts, the Urmen will rise up against their insect masters, against their Oppressors, that’s right isn’t it, Sarn’t?” Pot Shot asked.
“If we’re lucky,” said Hobson.
“Just think what we could do with an army of Urmen. We could conquer this world,” Mercy pondered.
“You’re forgetting mate, we’re going home,” said Gutsy. “I ain’t staying to conquer nothing. I’ve had a belly full o’ conquering and a fat lot a good it’s done me.”
The passage began to slope up gently before forking. Atkins hesitated. “Which way?”
Hobson glanced down the smaller tunnel and dismissed it. It was a cul-de-sac. “Carry on. We want to go up.”
Atkins advanced cautiously on up the tunnel. He began to hear sounds now carried on the draught; scuttlings and scufflings, poppings and clickings. He shuddered to think of the tunnels ahead teeming with giant insects. It had been bad enough in the trenches with the rats, but these things; they just filled him with horror. He couldn’t help himself. A little way ahead, the passage opened out onto what seemed to be a main thoroughfare. Behind him, the Section flattened themselves against the walls as, in the lichen-lit twilight, Chatts scurried about mere feet from them. Urmen, too, went about their chores, unaware of their presence. Atkins tensed himself, ready to make the bayonet thrust they had been trained to make without thinking.
Several heavy chitinous plated scentirrii, one or two carrying Electric Lances that reminded Atkins of Mercy’s Flammenwerfer, marched past. He glanced back down the passage to see Mercy’s eyes narrow. As a group of Urmen came along, they slipped in behind them and then off down the first rising passage to which they came.
It led them up to a great hall, the roof of which arced high overhead. Shafts of light punctuated its domed ceiling on one side, sunlight penetrating deep into the structure. Many passages led off the cavernous hall. A wide sloping path spiralled round the walls at a shallow gradient to a gallery about twenty or thirty feet up. From here, more passages led away into the edifice. Chatt soldiers were standing there, armed with lances, overseeing the workers below. Hundred if not thousands of Urmen toiled at the raised beds that covered the floor of the chamber, each filled with some sort of mould or fungus. They seemed to be cultivating the substance. A damp, earthy smell filled the hall.