Free The Ironclad Prophecy by Pat Kelleher

varying sizes that seemed to pulse in direct sunlight, as if breathing. The ones in shadow remained inert, as if asleep. The rocks were pockmarked with shallow circular depressions, where acid from long-vanished blooms had eaten into the surface.
    An unremitting rumble filled the rock-strewn canyon, echoing off the walls like some imminent, but never delivered, avalanche as His Majesty’s Land Ship Ivanhoe crawled along, pitilessly shattering small rocks caught under its tracks into dust. Grey smoke billowed from the roof exhaust to be snatched up by the breeze and dispersed behind it as the armoured behemoth crept and clanked through the rocky terrain as if sniffing out a trail.
    Not that the crew could see much from inside, where the heat and fumes were a microcosm of hell. Progress was slow. With no suspension, the tank had reduced its speed to a crawl, not wanting to belly or throw a track.
    The machine gunners, Norman and Cecil, squinted through the machine gun loopholes for threats as the rocky walls, partially obscured by dust thrown up by the tracks, rolled by with mesmerising slowness, without incident or interest apart from the blue-green pulsating growths. Cecil took a brief shot at them with the Hotchkiss to see if they’d burst. The rattle of machine gun fire reverberated through the canyon, causing Lieutenant Mathers to turn in his seat and glare at him.
    It also earned him a clip round the back of the head from Jack Tanner, the ex-prize-fighting gunner. It smacked his forehead into the handles of the gun barrel. “Quit that, you dozy mare. You’re wasting ammunition,” he bellowed above the engine’s roar.
    For the moment they were riding with hatches open to try and cool the interior. At least without the Hun firing machine guns at them there was no need to wear the stifling splash-masks and bruise helmets, and in the baking heat of the great iron oven, most of them had unbuttoned the coveralls they wore over the trousers, puttees and flannel shirts of their service dress, and undoing the shirts, too.
    At the back of the compartment, by the starboard secondary gears, Alfie wiped the sweat from his forehead and tried to keep his focus on the back of the driver’s chair from where, every now and again, hand signals for gear changes would come. When he wasn’t doing that, he was putting grease on the gears every thirty minutes or so. He caught a glimpse of a small love heart on the engine casing in front of him, drawn by Nellie Abbot’s oily finger. He smiled. That was one thing he hadn’t bargained on. One of many; this bleeding planet being one of them. But Nellie, what a find she was. She was different. He remembered the first time he met her, here on this world. They had been celebrating their first fresh food and the Fusiliers’ commander, Captain Grantham, God rest his soul, had given permission for a bit of a bash.
    The tank crew hadn’t really socialised with the Fusiliers since they found themselves on this world. They were trained to act as an independent unit and that was the way they liked it. It was part of the attraction of the Machine Gun Corps. They bivvied beside the Ivanhoe . It rarely left their sight. But that night he’d gone for a walk amongst the campfires. A couple of rowdy bloody infantry had tried to engage him in conversation, but on hearing his accent they began to jeer and josh him. So he’d wandered off and took a piss over a parapet into one of their trenches. Cocky northern bastards. He was on his way back to the tank when he was accosted by a young girl in a long brown skirt and jacket, who took his arm, linking hers through his, and talked as if they were old friends.
    “Cor blimey, what a night. I just got the old ’eave-’o from my mate. She’s over there talking to that NCO with the crutch. Well, I can tell when I’m not wanted. Mind you, she needs a bit of perkin’ up, bless her heart. Then I saw you in your coveralls. And I thought aye-aye, you’re from