The Ironclad Prophecy by Pat Kelleher

its sights, but it was altogether faster and more agile than the cumbersome armoured machine. Mathers threw himself to the ground as a spray of bullets zipped over his head.
    “Nesbit!” he roared, the admonition all but drowned by the noise of the tank.
    The giant beetle, having abandoned its flanking manoeuvre, now sought to charge the trespasser. Head down, swaying, its great stone stag horns wove through the air. It scuttled forwards again in short, abrupt bursts, the brief spatter from the forwards facing Hotchkiss ricocheting off its carapace, merely giving it pause for thought. It was almost with reluctance that the stone beetle then backed away. It regarded the ironclad hesitantly before slinking away and slithering down into a large gully.
    Mathers breathed a sigh of relief. When he picked himself off the ground, a sharp pain in his abdomen almost doubled him over. He frowned and sucked air in through gritted teeth until the sensation passed.
    He felt inside his tunic, pulled out his hip flask and took a quick slug of the distilled petrol fruit. Its fumes alone weren’t enough to dull the pain. More recently, he needed something stronger.
    The tank slewed round blindly, trying to find its vanished foe. Mathers approached the tank and stood in front of it. He could make out Clegg’s face through the driver’s open visor plate, and waved him on. The tank began to clank obediently towards him as he continued to scout ahead. The crevices and gullies were becoming fewer and narrower, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He hadn’t gone fifty yards when he heard a pistol go off. He turned to see someone fire from one of the tank’s pistol ports.
    This stone beetle creature was obviously more cunning than its forest cousin was. It had used the cover of the gullies to come round behind the tank and surprise its rival.
    “Swing to port!” Mathers yelled, waving his arms to his right as if he could speed up the tank’s turn by the action. “For Christ’s sake, swing to port!”
     
     
    I NSIDE THE TANK, peering out of the sponson door pistol port, Frank saw a flash of stone carapace and fired his revolver.
    “Bugger’s back!” he yelled. Faces peered out of the other pistol ports, searching for the creature.
    “Where?”
    “It’s behind us,” said Cecil, peering out of the pistol port in the rear door by the radiator.
    “Wally, about face, ninety degrees!” yelled Alfie. He nodded to Frank and when Wally gave the signal from his driving seat, they changed gears. The tank began to turn almost on the spot.
    “Where is it? I can’t see it!” said Wally, peering though his visor plate. They peered out of pistol ports and gun slits, checking off their positions.
    “Not here,” called Jack, swinging the gun round through a hundred and twenty degrees and peering through the gun slit.
    “Nor here,” said Cecil.
    “Can’t see it,” said Norman.
    “Then where the bloody hell is it?”
    As if in answer, there was a heavy thud accompanied by an oppressive green synesthetic flash as the creature landed on top of the tank. A noise like nails on a blackboard pierced the bass rumble of the engine as the creature’s feet sought purchase. Blocked by the belly of the creature above, exhaust fumes began to belch back into the compartment, filling the space with a choking black smoke.
    Alfie began coughing until spots burst before his eyes.
    Reggie took the commander’s seat next to Wally.
    “No free rides on this ’bus!” he said, pulling on the brake lever. The Ivanhoe jerked to a halt. Unable to get a firm grip, the stone beetle slithered off the front.
    “That’ll teach it,” said Wally with a self-satisfied sneer. “Go on, clear off, you great bleedin’ cockroach.”
    It skittered off round out of his limited field of view. Back in the compartment, the crew flung themselves at the pistol ports again. It was too fast for the gunners to get a bead on it.
    The back end of the tank tilted up as the