The Eternal War

CHAPTER 83

2001, New York

Maddy looked at the monitor in front of her. Another fuzzy, low-resolution, blocky image of what appeared to be a muddy field full of long wooden sheds. She could see a few trees, and a sky growing dark.

Computer-Bob was sending a narrow-thread signal to the rendezvous location, briefly checking every ten minutes for any density fluctuations and grabbing a pinhole image of the location at the same time. It was slowly eating into the full charge they’d had on the displacement machine; of the twelve green charge-LEDs, three of them were dark now.

Another dozen glimpses and they were going to be eating into stored energy they’d need to get Liam and the others back to 1831 and bring them home.

Come on, Liam! Where the hell are you?

He could make out six more landing rafts slowly chugging their way across the river. Devereau watched with growing unease as the soldiers still holding a position on the shingle behind their panel-barriers began to edge away from the middle of the landing area — where the six boats seemed to be heading towards.

‘James …’ he said in the gathering gloom. Wainwright was somewhere nearby. ‘Wainwright!’

He heard Wainwright make his way along the trench, a hasty word of encouragement and a pat on the shoulder for each man he passed. Presently he was beside Devereau.

‘What is it?’

Devereau pointed and handed him his field glasses. ‘Reinforcements coming.’

Wainwright squinted into the lenses, adjusting the focus as he panned up along the box-like hull of one of them. The protective panels were up, hiding whatever troops were inside. He thought he caught the bobbing of a head over the top — some sort of movement from within. He adjusted the binoculars on the flag fluttering lifelessly at the back of the craft, beside the helmsman’s position.

‘If I could just see the regimental banner … I can tell …’ His words faded.

‘What? What is it?’

Wainwright lowered the glasses. ‘Black Watch.’

Devereau knew them: one of the British army’s very best regiments. He puffed his cheeks and forced a smile. ‘Well then, we shall have a more even-handed fight this time round.’

Wainwright shook his head warily. ‘No … William,’ his voice a whisper for Devereau’s ears alone. ‘This isn’t good. The Black Watch are the regiment they have been trialling experimental units with.’

‘Experimental units?’

The haunted look on Wainwright’s face told him more than he wanted to hear. ‘Good God … you don’t mean …?’

‘Eugenics … yes.’

Devereau turned to look back at the river. The six high-panel-sided rafts were nearly all the way across, the sound of their motors chugging and spitting in the stillness that had settled over this contested patch of cratered and weed-strewn wasteland.

He stroked his beard absently, insistently. ‘Then … we must be sure to concentrate all our fire on those rafts. On whatever monsters are inside.’

Wainwright nodded.

Because whatever creatures are in there … if they get into the trench …

‘The men should know this,’ he added.

‘Agreed.’

Devereau cupped hands round his mouth. ‘Listen … men!’

The soft murmur of voices along the trench, a hundred different whispered conversations, ceased.

‘The rafts approaching … those vessels out there contain eugenic units!’

He’d expected a roar of panic, perhaps even the clatter of weapons dropping and the first of his men clambering out of the trench and making a run for it. Instead he was met with absolute silence and several hundred grime-encrusted faces along the line of the trench turned his way, faces absorbing the meaning of what he’d just said.

‘Understand, we CANNOT afford to let these monsters reach us! Is this clear?’

Frozen faces, frozen expressions, mouths hanging open … yet silence still.

‘Is this CLEAR?’

Sergeant Freeman took the lead. ‘Aye, sir.’

‘Whatever creatures step down from those rafts, we will kill every last one of them! We will gun them down before they even step foot on the shingle!’

Some of the men cheered unconvincingly.

‘Check your weapons, check your ammo! And make ready!’ He turned to look back down at the river.

Of the six landing rafts he’d spotted approaching, the two on the left and two on the right had pulled slightly ahead, beaching themselves in the spaces between the first wave of vessels. The middle two were holding back.

What are they up to?

The panels dropped on the four flanking rafts, and British troops wasted no time spilling down the ramps into the water. Some of his men began firing. An uncertain ripple of gunfire.

The middle two … whatever monsters they have for us are in those.

‘HOLD YOUR FIRE!’

Freeman and several other NCOs carried the order up the line and the firing ceased. The last thing they needed to be doing as the panels dropped on the last two rafts was swapping out empty cartridges.

The Black Watch waded quickly ashore and found the covered positions on the shingle vacated by the first wave of men. Devereau found himself getting impatient, cursing at the panels to drop, anxious to see what horrors the eugenologists back in Britain had conjured out of the coded chemistry of nature.

He heard a British officer barking an order. And then a moment later saw several dozen small round grenades tossed on to the shingle. They began to hiss as they spewed thick mustard-coloured columns of smoke. His first thought was that it was a poisoned gas, but then the men down there were not wearing masks and surely they would have tossed their grenades up the slope towards the trench.

Wainwright cursed. ‘Another wretched smokescreen.’

‘HOLD YOUR AIM!’ shouted Devereau.

We’ll hear the splash.

‘FIRE ON MY COMMAND!’

Several moments passed in a prolonged, agonizing silence as the yellow mist thickened and spread along the shingle, effectively shrouding the middle two rafts, beginning to hide the other rafts as well.

Then he heard it, the clank of latches being released in unison somewhere in the smoke and the first splash of a ramp landing in the water.

‘FIRE!’

The entire length of the trench was fringed with a ribbon of grey-blue cordite smoke, carbines firing rapidly one shot after another, several machine guns spitting muzzle flash and stuttering a steady stream of bullets, all of them into the yellow mist.

Above the cacophany of gunfire he could hear the rattle and clang of rounds impacting on metal and something heavy splashing into the water.

Something big.

The yellow mist was slowly thinning and spreading, drifting up the slope towards them, hiding what was in there for longer than was fair.

He squinted into the yellow, managing to just about pick out the stump of the brick smokestack. The head and shoulders of a soldier holding aloft a regimental flag, too foolishly confident to keep down while the volley fire was still going on. The edge of the left-most raft … and looming above the battlefield the ghostly outline of the bridge.

Then something, darker, much closer than anything else … more defined as it scrambled uphill towards them.

‘God help us,’ he whispered as it emerged out of the last curling skeins of mist rolling uphill.