Black Hand Gang (30 page)

"You used them to replace your own shortage of workers."

"Not without price. There came a dark time. The Urmen then worshipped a different god, the forbidden one."

Jeffries saw his opportunity. "This is all very interesting, but what I require is specific knowledge. Tell me about Croatoan."

Chandar rounded on Jeffries, its mandibles chattering, the vestigial limbs at its abdomen fidgeting.

"That's right," Jeffries said, deliberately relishing the opportunity to say the name again and forming each syllable clearly: "Croatoan."

Chandar glanced around at the alchemist dhuyumirrii. None of them seemed to have heard. "That name is forbidden!"

"Nevertheless, that is my price. You want my cooperation then tell me what you know," said Jeffries firmly. "Or should I shout the name out loud, here, now?"

"No! You must not," said Chandar, rising up on its legs in the threatening manner Jeffries had seen Sirigar use before.

"But your own studies? If you could tell me about your... forbidden one, how much might I be able reciprocate, to advance your own Urman studies with information I have? What is it that Sirigar and its acolytes don't want you to know? You have hinted yourself that passages in your scriptures concerning Urmen are ambiguous at best, maybe excised at worst. What if my information could shed light on them?"

Jeffries held the Chatt's gaze, looking deep into its dark orbs. He had the old fool's measure now. Give this old louse enough rope and it'll hang itself. It was like leaving a trail of sugar for an ant.

"Very well," said Chandar. It shrugged its shoulders and waved its antennae stubs in a way that seemed to indicate agitation. "But not here, I have somewhere we can talk. Come with me."

Chandar led him out through the chamber where they had stored their collection of items pilfered from the entrenchment. The jumble of trench stores and arms were still there, no doubt waiting to have their odours investigated, distilled and broken down. From there the passage became narrower and showed signs of disrepair. It seemed to be a little used part of the colony.

"Where are we?" asked Jeffries, a hint of suspicion in his voice, the reassuring pressure of the pistol barrel pressing against his abdomen.

"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

"The Last High Place"

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.

Urmen were not the only creatures tending the fungus beds, there were Chatts, too, although they were outnumbered by the Urmen about them. They seemed to be smaller than the Chatt soldiers above and there were fewer segments to their antennae. Their chitinous armour was smoother, lighter. These, Atkins assumed must be the worker Chatts.

The fungus from the beds was loaded onto large sled-like litters before being transported elsewhere, presumably for storage or distribution.

From the shadows of the tunnel, Atkins watched the Urmen, fascinated. They seemed like ordinary humans. They were dressed in roughly woven tunics and each wore some sort of blue mark upon their foreheads. Looking into the hall he was reminded of his first job in Houlton Mill, the men and women intent on their task as the foremen looked on. Fourteen he'd been when he left school. Those foremen hadn't been armed, though. Atkins counted twenty soldier Chatts, five in the gallery, the rest patrolling the floor.

"Bloody slave labour, that's what it is," muttered Pot Shot, appalled.

"Up there" whispered Everson. Atkins and Hobson followed his finger to the gallery. They watched Urmen enter it with their laden sleds.

After an urging shove from Hobson, Atkins stepped warily out into the hubbub of the fungus farming chamber, his bayoneted Enfield at the ready. The noise about him didn't suddenly subside and deteriorate into an ugly, tense silence as he half expected. In fact, the world carried on around him, the Urmen continuing with their tasks and pulling harvested litters of fungus along using shoulder harnesses woven from what looked like plant fibre.

Cautiously the rest of the section stepped out to join him. They kept to the edge of the chamber and headed in an anticlockwise direction for the gallery ramp. Poilus broke away from the group to acquire an apparently abandoned sled-like litter. He loaded the sacks and sandbags of extra weapons onto it, then heaped it with fungus to the cover the weapons. An Urman woman approached him to protest and Atkins felt himself tense for a fight, but Poilus, gesticulating, seemed to be making some sort of argument. Angrily, she gesticulated back. Poilus trumped her by pointing to the soldier Chatts on the gallery above and she threw her arms in the air, shook her head and wandered off sullenly.

They were making headway toward the spiral ramp when several soldier Chatts appeared out of a passage and advanced purposefully towards them. Urmen scuttled out of the way as, behind the squat, heavy-set soldiers, a taller, more regal-looking Chatt followed them; its head and antennae covered with a rich carmine hood that masked its features. It wore a length of silk thrown over its shoulder and tied around its abdomen from which hung a great number of tassels. The soldiers knew a member of the ruling classes when they saw one. Atkins and Hobson froze, unsure how to react.

A flat-faced soldier Chatt stopped in front of them, its lance sparking faintly. Its black, featureless eyes scrutinized them. Its antennae waved petulantly as it sought confirmation of the expected chemical mark of Khungarrii scent. Atkins became very aware of the sweat on his hands and his forehead as it continued its inspection and hoped his human smell wouldn't wash away his scent mask. Finally satisfied, its antennae stopped waving and it began scissoring its mandibles belligerently. "Move, dhuyumirrii comes."

Poilus, helped by Pot Shot, dragged the litter to the side of the chamber before dropping his harness and making a curious gesture, touching his hands to his forehead and then to his chest, while bowing to the imperious Chatt approaching them.

"Move." he hissed urgently at Atkins and Hobson, who moved clumsily back against the wall under the watchful gaze of the soldier Chatt. With a nod from Everson, the others followed suit. Atkins caught a waft of cloying perfume from the head covering of the stately Chatt. It was so strong that he had to suppress a cough as it swept passed without acknowledging their presence.

Pot Shot glared after the haughty arthropod. "Same the bloody world over," he muttered. "There's always them on top. Now I find out it's the same on different worlds an' all. I can't say I'm particularly encouraged. Still, all will be different when we get the Urmen to stand up for their rights and take these folk down a peg or two."