Prologue:
A successful experiment.
THE EXPEDITER LISTENED in silence. With difficulty, it managed to remain motionless. The Expediter was in the middle of its sex-interphase and the hormonal changes always made it irritable. That irritability interfered with its logical thought processes. The Expediter did not want to act out of simple aggravation.
Should it continue to prevaricate?
Lying was possible, of course, especially to such as these. Primitive creatures, really, the female as much as the male. But the Expediter thought that it would still be very difficult. Any explanation as to why the starship had left so hastily would seem contrived-even to the two stupid beings who were bombarding the Expediter with their clamor.
The Expediter pondered the matter for some time before coming to its conclusion.
No. Further prevarication would hardly be worth the effort. Besides, the Expediter thought that it was time to discover how well the protease haemato-toxin affected this species.
The dart-spines targeted, ocelli orientating them to center on the soft, bulging midriff-masses. The two beings in the room made no attempt to escape. They simply continued their babble. Apparently, they did not recognize the purpose of the spines. An interesting datum.
Razor-tipped, barbed harpoon-darts streaked out, each trailing their protoplasm hose. The skewering force of the darts cut into the gold head-filamented female in mid-shrill. Her bleat became a scream as the Expediter's internal myomeres pumped the massive dose of digestive-toxin into the soft-bodies.
The creatures threshed. The Expediter studied the ensuing process with interest.
Cell-lysis caused the circulatory fluids to pour out of the eating and scent-detection orifices. The soft, pallid epidermis ulcerated and erupted, spraying liquefied flesh. The bipedal beings were now twisting and writhing in bizarre contortions.
Another interesting datum. The Expediter had not realized that their vertebral columns could bend as far as that. Endoskeletons were strange biological adaptations. It made a note of that flexibility.
The Expediter watched as lysis continued. A full two minutes passed before the bodies finally lay still. Also worth noting. The digestive-toxin was not rapid, but it was effective. That, of course, was to be expected. The Overphyle had yet to discover a sentient species immune to it.
The Expediter disengaged the barbs of its harpoon darts, pulled them out and winched them back into itself. Then, after a moment's hesitation, decided not to feed. It was not particularly hungry, and there was always a slight risk with ingesting untested alien protein.
Multiple ocelli checked the room. Other than the two sprawled, bloody, ruined bodies there were no signs of the Expediter's passage.
Calmly, it left, locking the door behind it. In the silent and luxuriously appointed room, the only trace that remained of the murderer's identity was a faint camphor-naphthalene scent. That would dissipate within a few minutes. The Expediter itself was quite oblivious to the smell, but it hardly mattered. By the time the servants found the bodies, the odor would be indistinguishable from the general reek.
Chapter 1:
Under Enemy Attack.
DOWN IN THE BUNKER the music issuing from Chip Connolly's small portable radio stopped. "We interrupt this broadcast of Forces-Favorite Radio with a newsflash. The bodies of the Chairman of the Board, Aloysius Shaw, and his wife, Gina, were found by household staff in an advanced state of decomposition. Despite this, servants claim that the Chief Executive Shareholder had been alive five hours previously. Foul play is suspected. Police are following definite leads and several suspects are being held for questioning."
Chip sat up. "I'll be damned," he muttered. There was no noticeable chagrin in his voice. "Somebody up and killed the rotten-"
He broke off, feeling the ground shake. A moment later, the bunker rumbled with thunder. Dust and dirt showered down from the roof. Chip sighed. Clearly, the lull in the bombardment was over.
Another shake and rumble, and dirt showered down on them again. Some sifted onto Chip's face. One of the other soldiers in the bunker sneezed in the darkness. They were being softened up for an advance. For the three hours prior to that brief lull, he hadn't heard anything much except for the endless pounding thunder of Magh' artillery.
Silence.
Shit! That meant-Chip flicked the infrared headlight on, just in time to see the whole wall behind Lieutenant Rosetski, Dermott and Mack cave in on top of them.
Out of the billowing dust stormed the stuff of nightmares: Magh'.
They were a variety of creatures designed to shred soft bodies. Their white pseudo-chitin armor gleamed and their chelicerae snapped angrily. Then the air was full of shouting and squeaking. In the wild, confused melee, headlight beams danced in the dusty air, as more and more of the invaders piled in.
The Maggot arrowscorp nearly got him. Chip rolled frantically, barely getting clear, thrusting his blade out sideways. The stupid scorp slid straight onto the Solingen steel. It wasn't standard issue, that knife. It was a real twenty-first-century chef's knife from Old Earth, which Chip had stolen from his employer's kitchen the day before he had reported to boot camp.
Good thing he had, too. The official crap the soldiers were issued wouldn't even have penetrated. The colony's steel plant would have been at home in 1870. With a standard-issue blade he'd have been dead already. Instead, Chip was able to enjoy the experience of having an arrowscorp slowly pressing down onto him, snapping its jaws eight inches from his face, about to kill him in, oh, maybe ten seconds or so.
The spine-tail streaked forward, barely missing his twisting shoulder with its venomous barb. Chip managed to grab it, just behind the stinger, and cling to the slippery, leathery pseudo-chitin. Corrosive venom dripped, inches from his arm. The Solingen steel slid slowly through some more Maggot, then stopped against a joint ridge-thickening. The Maggot's ichor dribbled off his wrist and into the dust as the creature pressed down onto him.
The back-edged jaws were only inches off his face now. The creature writhed, jaws snapping air just in front of him. Chip couldn't let go, and he couldn't win. In the clatter-clatter and effort-grunts of hand, claw and tooth combat, somebody screamed in a terrible, tearing agony. A scorp sting had obviously gone home.
"Help me!" another shrill voice shrieked above the tumult.
It sounded like a rat. Hell and buggery! He couldn't even help himself! Sweat was lubricating the hand that clung to the scorp's tail. Any moment now and he'd be screaming too…
Suddenly, his headlight silhouetted a batwing flutter, then highlighted a clash of inch-long white-white fangs in an evil, black squashed-pigsnout face.
The scorp went limp, its ganglion-ladder severed.
Chip shoved it away, gasping. "Thanks, Michaela!"
"Moronic, useless, be-damned Primate!" Michaela Bronstein fluttered off, dodging other reaching and snapping claws with ease.
"Get it offa me!" groaned a smothered voice from the dusty darkness. Chip's searching headlight showed a long tail protruding from under a St. Bernard-sized armored burrower. The stocky soldier heaved the dead Maggot aside by the telson. A long-snouted plump rat-shape, as big as a small siamese cat, scrambled hastily out from under, with its red-tipped fangs exposed in a wicked, lean-jawed grin.
The rat leaped at Chip's throat, moving in a twisting maelstrom of teeth and raking claws. Sudden shreds flew… from the joint of the saw-edged pedipalp that had been about to take Chip's head off. The rat had disabled one claw, but the other claw would soon snap the rat. Chip's Solingen steel proved its quality again, slicing an exact "X" into the double ventral ganglion knot of the attacking Maggot. A quick, neat, precise job, like carving tomato roses.
"Shee… yit! That was nearly my head," panted Chip. He and the rat both scrambled clear of the falling Maggot.
Long insectivore teeth gleamed. "You owe me a beer, Connolly. Make it two. I've got a nice bit of tail I'd like to share it with."
"Bullshit! You owe me, Fal-"
The air boomed and fragments ricocheted off Chip's slowshield. Great! thought Chip, with relief. One of the bat-bombardiers must have blown the Maggot access tunnel. Now at least they only had to deal with what was already inside the bunker. Chip stumbled over something in the dust and darkness. Fell. Landed hard.
"Get your sorry whoreson ass offa my tail," chittered a feminine voice in the darkness. "You useless effing bread-chipper!" Chip scrambled to his feet. He'd rather fight Maggots than Phylla. That was one mean rat-girl!
Then, with a slow creaking groan, the main roofbeam fell in. Either the demolition charge or the Maggot tunnel must have undermined its support. Earth and roofing material descended, in a tons-heavy avalanche. Chip grabbed the rat-girl and dived for the far wall.
In the creaking darkness a rat voice griped, "Malmsey-nosed whoremasters. My pack is somewhere under that lot."
The air was so full of dust, you could shovel the stuff. Chip coughed and felt about for his dislodged headlight. Rats and bats could manage in the total darkness. The bats had their sonar and the rats-built from a mix of elephant shrew, shrew and rat genes-could just about read by scent, and had keen hearing to boot. Humans still needed implanted infrared lenses and headlights. Maggots might have keen hearing, feelers and scent sensors, but were plainly blind to infrared. It was one small advantage.
"Anyone got a headlight there?" Chip asked softly. A Maggot could nail him so fast now. He still had his knife… but it was no use poking blindly at Maggots. He knew he had to cut precisely, and that he'd only have one chance. He wouldn't have said "no thanks" to his standard issue bangstick, an assegai with a cartridge set into the blade. It wasn't a great weapon, but it allowed some margin of error. It was a lot better than the rest of the issue crap: a stupid little ice axe thing and a trench knife you couldn't slice baloney with.
The slowship which had settled the planet of Harmony And Reason had taken the colonists out of the network of industries which twenty-second century technology needed to support its complexity. So, except for the clone units on the ship, the colonists were back at self-sustaining tech levels. From the manufacturing point of view, that meant nineteenth to early twentieth century. Which meant no mono-molecular edged knives.
Chip had once tried to tell an officer-a Shareholder, naturally-why the thing was effing useless compared to his own. In typical officer fashion the jerk had told him to shut up, and demanded to know where his regulation trench knife was. After all, what could a veteran grunt know about fighting Maggots? Much less than some still-wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant, of course.
Still, the bangsticks worked. When you pushed them into the right bit of Maggot, that is. He really wouldn't have minded having his. It must be buried back there somewhere…
He tried again. "Anyone got a light?"
Nobody replied from the darkness. But at least there were no Maggot scritch-scritch noises either.
"Who else is in here?" he asked, daring to speak slightly louder. He strained to hear one particular voice, hoping…
He'd seen the wall come down on Dermott. The slowshield would have protected her from the debris, but had she managed to get out before the roof came down?
"I' faith. I am, and so is someone who is lying on me."
"Sorry… Doll? Is that you?" It was the same rat voice which had been bemoaning its missing pack.
"Yes 'tis I, you fat swasher. I should have known by the familiar weight that it was you, Fal."
Chip cleared his throat, trying to clear away the constricting fear. "Let's have a roll call, guys."
"Piss off. Who do you think you are?" said another male-rat voice. Chip could tell, even in the dark. The male rats always had their vocal synthesizers adjusted to a low pitch, in the attempt to sound like real he-rats.
"I'm Connolly, rat. I'm a human, see. That means you take my orders."
"You've got more chance of falling pregnant, Connolly," groused the same voice. "You're not a whoreson officer, you're just a vatbrat."
Chip ground his teeth. There hadn't been a human reply yet. "Rat, I will pull your tail off, and then shove it down your throat until it comes out of your ass, if you give me any more lip. Now, who else is in here?"
There came a chorus of voices:
"BombardierBat Siobhan Illich-Hill."
"BombardierBat Longfang O'Niel."
"BombardierBat Cuchulain Behan."
As always, Chip thought the sound of an Irish accent coming out of their voice synthesizers was ludicrous, but the bats insisted on it.
"It is delusions of grandeur I think the human has," said another bat-Irish voice, leaden with resentment.
"Do you now, Eamon? Well, I think it is you who have the delusions. This is Senior BombardierBat Michaela Bronstein, Connolly."
Chip was relieved to hear Bronstein's voice. In some ways, he thought Michaela was even crazier than the other bats, but at least he'd always been able to get along with her.
"And, seeing as you want to know, I'm Melene, gorgeous." A rat-girl voice.
"Phylla. You flung me here." That rat-girl didn't sound too charmed about it. But Phylla was usually in a foul mood.
"Doll Tearsheet-at your service."
"Not right now, Doll." Fat Falstaff sounded more cheerful already.
"Shut up, Fal. I know you're here. Anybody else?" Chip hoped for a human voice…
"Nym."
"Pistol."
"Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel."
Despite the name, that was a rat too. "Doc," as everybody else called him, was the platoon's medic.
Rats. Rats and bats. Chip felt for his torch again. Maybe he could see her. Then a bat voice said, "Try the other side of you, indade."
The bat-Irish idiom, as always, grated on Chip's nerves. "Why can't you just say `indeed,' dammit?" he muttered, as he began feeling around. "Stupid friggin' affectation…"
The voice, still as heavily accented as ever, clarified the location: "About a foot from your knee."
He felt there. Encountered the hard roundness of his torch. Felt for the switch. On. There was no light, but he'd done enough globe changes in total darkness to manage to fix that, a lot faster than soldiers had once been able to fieldstrip their rifles. The light stabbed out through the hanging dust.
No Maggots. In the narrow uncaved-in section of what had been their bunker, a handful of rats and a cluster of bats pressed against the sandbag-wall. There were no other human survivors with them. Already one plump rat was scrabbling aside pieces of debris.
"Gotta find my pack. It's got my grog in it!" hissed fat Fal, digging frantically. "Damn near a full bottle too."
Two of the other rats hastily got up to join him.
"Oh, aye, that's right," said a bat sarcastically. O'Niel, that was. "Bring the rest of the roof down on all of us in your mad search for the daemon drink."
Fal, the paunchy rat, simply grubbed harder. "It's dig or die sober," he said with grim humor. "Besides, I might find someone. Maybe a grateful bit of tail."
"Yep. Only one thing worse than dying sober. That would be to die a virgin," said his villainous one-eyed companion, Pistol, nimbly jumping clear of a cascade of earth.
"Ha, Pistol, as if your puissant pike ever found a rat maiden that had despaired of winning a rat's affection…"
"What we observe here is the moral quandary inherent in the empiricist approach to-"
"Oh, put a sock in it, Doc," Pistol said.
A flash of Chip's headlight showed him a rat with a daft pince-nez made of scrap wire perched on his long nose, also digging. That was the weird Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. That rat proved sanity was not necessary for survival.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich was a soft-cyber experiment who had been drafted in when things got dire. Somebody had told Chip that Doc had been the product of load-tolerance tests on the vocabulary unit ROM of the alien-built cybernetic enhancement chips. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich had gotten a download of the whole of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Science of Logic into his ratty brain, along with a mass of other philosophical claptrap.
The result: the loony medic seemed to think he was a rat reincarnation of Georg W. F. Hegel. A reincarnation, mind you, in the body of a genetically engineered creature the size of a small cat, built on the genetic blueprint of an elephant shrew, with add-ons from real shrews and rats. Yes. Crazy. Chip thought it came of having alien hardware in their heads.
At least the rest of the rats in his unit had just gotten downloaded with Shakespeare plays, Gilbert and Sullivan and, for no reason Chip could imagine, a reading of Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday. Of course, ratty nature saw to it that they identified with the lowlifes and not the heroes, even in blasted Shakespeare. No Hamlets and King Lears here! But plenty of rogues and merry wives. As Fal said: they had been at a great feast of languages and stolen the scraps.
Fortunately the language units only picked out words from the material for the speech synthesizers. But the occasional phrases popped up, too. Usually, the rats being what they were, insults.
Chip shook his head. Musing about rat-language at a time like this? He knew, deep inside, it was because he didn't want to think about something else. Still, there was a chance, a desperately small chance… He got up, and started pulling fallen material aside himself. He worked as fast as he could. There might still be survivors. Their personal slowshields would stop sudden impact, but couldn't resist the slow, steady pressure.
But, for all the haste with which they worked, and the badinage, Chip and his companions were alert. There was always a chance they'd dig up a live Maggot too.
"What about sober and a virgin?" said Chip to the tail end of the burrowing Fal, as he lifted a beam to allow Nym to get in to the next section. The only human they'd seen so far-the lieutenant-hadn't been alive. But Chip hadn't been looking for him anyway.
"You're as bad as these other useless rowdy, lecherous drunks," said Melene, one of the three surviving rat-girls. She was also digging. It sounded as if she approved of lecherous drunks.
Chip managed a decent grin. He wasn't really in the mood for this, but he'd learned how to get along with the rats. "Just a lot more expensive to get drunk so that you can have your wicked way with me, Mel."
This provoked a snort-of amusement from the rats and disgust from the bats. "I' faith, when it comes to drinking, Fat Fal will give you a run for your money," said Doll, reputed to be the baddest rat-girl in the army. She would know.
"Fal?" demanded Chip. "Run for my money? Run! Fal! Come on! Be reasonable. He gets exhausted picking his teeth."
"Listen…" snapped one of the bats. "They're coming. Quiet!"
There was silence. Chip's less-than-cybershrew- or batborg-keen ears could hear nothing. Yet obviously, the others could. After a few seconds it came, at first a faint whisper, then growing and growing. Arthropod clicking. The sound of myriad upon myriad Maggot clawfeet, passing right above them. If they made any noise now, the Maggot-diggers would come through the roof. All they could do was wait, knowing that their comrades might possibly still be alive under the debris. Knowing too that, with each passing moment, the chances for any buried friends diminished.
Eric Flint
Rats, Bats amp; Vats
Chapter 2:
Really under enemy attack.
THE TRAMP-SCRITCH-TRAMP went on and on for hours. They were plainly right underneath a big Magh' push.
Trapped.
Chip could do nothing but sit in the darkness, conserving his torch power pack. He thought of sun and light and air. He couldn't help but think of the dead. Friends. Comrades-in-arms. And…
Dermott. Damn!
Here he was, as far as he knew the last surviving human in this hole. If he had to be honest with himself, Chip knew that they had no chance of getting out of here. It was a thought you pushed aside or you cracked up. He'd had to push aside the memory of death and the hope of survival so many times. After all, he'd been a conscript for seven months now. It felt like seven years. In this war he was a combat veteran. A conscript's lifespan in the front lines was usually less than three weeks.
Buddies were close, and yet… you kept your distance. You didn't want to get too close. Still, this time… he'd like to see another live human face. Dermott's, especially, but any human would be better than none. If push came to shove, Chip would even settle for a goddamn officer. Even if the alien soft-cyber enhanced rats and bats, with all their goofy attitudes and ideas, were still more his kind of folk than those sons-of-Shareholders were, he'd still like to see a living human again…
Hell, he might as well wish for one with an hourglass figure too. And a few beers. A steak as thick as both his thumbs… Huh. He was getting more like one of the damn rats by the day.
The air was hot and stale in this hole. But at least the noises from above had begun to change.
"They're building." The low bat-whisper was the first thing besides Maggot susurration and his own quiet breathing and heartbeat that Chip had heard for hours now. He recognized Bronstein's voice easily enough. Despite the generic similarity of all the voices produced by the synthesizers, each rat and bat still managed to maintain a distinctive tone.
Chip ground his teeth. Maggot tunnels above them! Maggot tunnels could be miles wide and five hundred yards high. "Look, we've got to get out of here. We're gonna run out of air and suffocate soon anyway."
"We'd be foine if it wasn't for the primate using two-thirds of the oxygen," grumbled a bat. That was Behan, surly as usual. "Still, we should be able to start diggin' out now. Those builder-digger Maggots are really stupid. When I was in that mole in Operation Zemlya, we popped out right next to them. All they did was stand around and get butchered."
"When who starts digging?" sneered Fal. "You damn flyboys can't dig." The rat heaved his corpulent form upright. "Who does all the work around here, and why do we, hey, flyboy glamour-puss?"
"Work! 'Tis ignorant of the concept you rats are!" snapped the big male bat. He called himself Eamon Jugash… something or other. Chip couldn't remember. Or see the point. Bats didn't really have decent jugs, after all.
But that was bats for you. Bats always chose mile-long pretentious names for themselves, to replace their official Society-issued numbers. What Chip principally remembered about this one was that Big Dermott had said that that particular bat was trouble. He would tell her The realization hit him like a sledgehammer. He wasn't going to be telling Dermott anything. She was dead for sure, by now.
He was a bit shocked at how hard that knowledge hit him. It wasn't as if Dermott had had a dazzling personality or been any kind of a beauty queen. Not too bright, really, with a broad Vat face on a big workhorse body. But a nice girl all the same. A very nice girl. A girl with a dream… One more indebted conscript the Company wouldn't be collecting from.
Still, he had to make sure. Maybe He got up and began digging into the rubble.
"You're not going to get out that way, Connolly," said Siobhan.
"I'm looking for someone," he replied stubbornly.
"Nobody would still be alive."
"I know. But I can't just leave her. There's a chance."
"Dermott's dead," said the bat quietly. "A scorp got her, in the middle of cave-in. I saw."
Chip swallowed. He supposed that it had been an open secret. A private life in the trenches was a wild dream. "Are you sure?"
"Sure as breath. It was quick and painless, Connolly."
That was a lie. Scorp poison wasn't. But Siobhan had seen her die. That was plain enough. Poor kid. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and swore quietly to himself.
He sighed, and started to haul clods away behind the digging rats. Every single time you said, "Don't get involved, or, if you're gonna get involved, just keep it physical." But you always ended up exchanging dreams. Dermott had wanted a farm. Huh. A Vat-born indentured girl who wanted a farm! Fat chance. Farm laborer was the closest vatbrats could get. Well. The kid had bought one. And the Company wouldn't be screwing her any more, either. Yep, the only way out of the Shareholders' clutches… die. And then, rumor had it, they'd bill your clone for the burial charges.
"Responsible socialism," the New Fabian Society Shareholders called the system they'd set up on the colony planet of Harmony And Reason. HAR-or, as vatbrats called it, Har-de-har-har. When they weren't just calling it the Company Town.
Chip had been born here-grown here, rather-in one of the New Fabian Society's genetic production plants. Grown in a Company Vat, raised in a Company Nursery, and educated in a Company School. His "parents" were shreds of cryo-preserved tissue some long-dead dreamers had sent off on a slowship to this new "Utopia" among the stars.
Utopia-ha! Even the Shareholders, so far as Chip could tell, didn't believe that crap. At least, he'd heard them whine enough about Harmony And Reason in the haute cuisine restaurant where he'd worked before the war. Not that he'd had much opportunity to listen. He'd been an apprentice sous-chef after finishing Company school, and he hadn't had a lot to do with the clientele.
Still, he'd noticed that the Shareholders seemed to be especially grumpy about the sunlight. To Chip, the sunlight was not too blue, nor too hot. But the older Shareholders weren't local Vat-born clone kids like him. No, they'd been wealthy adults back on Old Earth-philanthropists, they called themselves-and had come along in cryo-suspension. The windows of Chez Henri-Pierre had been specially tinted to yellow the sunlight for them. According to them Earth light had been sweeter and better…
A rude voice interrupted his musing.
"Pull your finger out and move the damn stuff out of the way, Connolly."
Chip shook himself. He'd been falling asleep, he realized. Air.. .
"Dig us an air hole, Pistol."
"So that we can breath Maggot pong? And they can smell us?"
"We need oxygen, you…"
"Better make us some human oxygen out of your own air hole, you muddy rascal! I feel tired and I've got a headache. I don't feel like digging."
"Intercranial pressure because of vasodilation in the brain from oxygen deprivation," said Doc. "The lethargy is caused by raised CO2 levels."
For a moment, Chip was startled by the assurance in the bespectacled rat's voice. But then he reminded himself that Doc had proven, more than once, that he was an excellent medic. At least, when he wasn't droning on about epistemology and ontology and the whichness-of-what.
Chip unlimbered the Solingen. It seemed an effort. Like bothering with perfectly scalloping that last potato of the hundreds… Like that, this had to be done. "Dig straight up, Pistol, or I'll shove this up your ass and ruin your sex life." He noticed that his outstretched arm was trembling.
It wasn't a long dig. Moments later the rat broke through. The Maggot-tunnel air was cool, sweet and fresh by comparison to the stuff in their hole. The one eyed rat took long whiffling-nosed sniffs of it. "So okay, Connolly, you damned dunghill cur. My head already feels better. Maybe I won't piss in your next beer. Even Maggot-air smells good compared to the stuff in here. But don't ever threaten me with that poniard of yours again."
That was one villainous old rat. There were times to back off, and this was one of them. "You can empty your bladder into the next beer I buy, if you like. It'll be yours. I owe it to you, I reckon. Lack of air was making me silly."
The one-eyed rat was mollified. In a manner of speaking. "I'm a whiskey drinker, you skinny blue-bottle rogue. And I like triples. And I never pee in my own drinks."
"Give a rat an inch…" Chip smiled.
"And he'll think you're shafting him," concluded Pistol, with a suitable gesture.
"Will you two be getting out of the way so that we can all have a breath of air?" Eamon grumbled.
Eric Flint
Rats, Bats amp; Vats
Chapter 3:
Behind enemy lines.
SLOWLY, THEY CONTINUED to dig a narrow passage, under the hardpan of what was plainly an ever-growing Maggotway. The rats were fine excavators, but the main problem was where to put the uncompacted material they were digging out. And a rat hole was going to be too small for Chip, although the bats could manage it.
A quiet council was held. "You guys had better dig out. We'd better block that air hole, too. Maggots will smell us out, otherwise. I'll break out and take my chances when you've been gone a while." Chip was nobody's hero-by definition-since he was still a live grunt. Heroes got dead. And the first thing a grunt learned was "don't volunteer." But there didn't seem much point in getting them all killed. They had a tiny chance. He didn't.
"The Maggots up there are building faster than we can dig," grumbled Fal. "My old claws are nearly worn out."
He puffed out his chest. Well, his belly. "Anyway, we'd never leave a comrade in distress." The plump rat even managed to get the words out without choking.
"Never?" asked Bronstein, her voice dry. Rats might be natural Maggot-killers, but they weren't known for suicidal courage.
"Well, hardly ever!" chirped Melene.
"And certainly not one who owes us drinks," added Pistol.
"We've still got a load of satchel-charges between us," mused Bronstein. "We should all go up. We can move a damned sight faster through their tunnels than we can with a fat old rat like you grubbing. And if they try and stop us, we can blow down the very heavens on them."
"The human's right for once," hissed Eamon. "What cause do we have to die for this Company-lackey primate? His kind wanted this war. Leave him."
"Damn you, bat!" snarled Chip. "The effing Company grew me in a vat too. Just like you. I'm an indebted conscript. Also just like you. Get that straight, squashed pig-face. And nobody wants this war, not even the goddamn Company, but if we don't fight, we're all Maggot food. Call me a Company-lackey again and I'll dice you into bat tartare."
The big bat bared his long sharp fangs at Chip and then studiously ignored him.
"He'll be killed on his own, to be sure, Eamon," said Siobhan timidly. She was the smaller of the two female bats, and didn't have Bronstein's self-assurance.
"Indade." Again, Eamon flashed his teeth. "And so will we all be, waiting for him. Is it not fair that one of these humans that put us all in bondage repay us with a distraction? I say, bat-comrades-in-arms, that we put it to the vote!"
"To Lucifer's privy with you and your vote," grunted Nym. "I'm going up." Nym was a veritable giant among rats, fully sixteen inches high. He seldom spoke, but when he did the other rats paid attention. Even the bats-even the belligerent Eamon-were careful not to aggravate Nym.
The one exception was Doc. The pedant-rat eyed Nym beadily and said: "Dolt. You forget the overriding precedence of epistemology."
Nym stared back at him. For some odd reason, Doc never irritated Nym the way he did everyone else.
"Huh?" Chip looked at him, puzzled.
Doc sniffed. "In layman's terms-" He pointed at the roof with a stubby rat digit. "The enemy is coming."
There was instant silence. Then someone said: "Fighters, too, from the sound of 'em. Lots of Maggot-scorps. They must have smelled us.. ."
"Out of the way." Bronstein waddled forward, moving as clumsily as the bats always did on the ground. She carried one of the bombardier-bats' small satchel-charges in her wing-claws. "I'll blow the roof and we'll run."
"Give it," said Pistol. "I'll shove it up the air hole. I can move faster than you."
"Okay. I'll put the timer on seven seconds. When she blows, be ready to run. Chip, you take that bag over there. There's half a platoon's worth of spare bat-mines in it. We might need them."
The debris was still falling when the surviving platoon members-one human, five bats, and seven rats-scrambled out of the hole.
They found themselves inside a roofed-over but plainly incomplete Magh' tunnel. It was cathedral high and filled with a tracery of mud beams at angles that were… wrong to the human eye. Maggots didn't work in straight lines or precise angles. The material resembled adobe, but the Maggot version was a lot stronger.
" 'Ware Maggots!" In the pallid greenish light of Maggot lumifungus on the walls, Chip could see a column of the scorpion-digger Magh' skittering closer down the passage. The bats were already flapping upwards in the high tunnel. At least they'd have a chance, now that they had flying room.
"… Off to Dublin in the green! Our bayonets a-gleamin' in the sun!" shrieked Eamon, diving on the Maggot-scorp column. He wasn't going to run… or fly from the enemy. The big male bat might be dead set on treating humans like shit, but he liked to fight, especially against the odds.
Well, Chip knew bats were like that. Crazy. After brewing up the cyber-enhanced rats, the genetic engineers at the New Fabian Society's labs had tried for more heroic and idealistic helpers for mankind's war when the bats' soft-cyber units were downloaded. They had put Irish revolutionary songs and old "Wobbly" tunes into the bats' vocabulary memory units.
Truth to tell, the bats were more idealistic and courageous than the rats. A lot more. But, in Chip's opinion, they were even more off-the-wall. And they were prone to endless political theorizing and disputation.
The rats claimed it came from hanging upside down and getting too much blood to the head-not to mention abstaining from drink and having sex only once a year or so. Chip thought the problem might be simpler. The bats didn't know if their enemies were the humans or the Maggots. (Neither did the rats, he suspected-but, ratlike, they didn't worry much about anything beyond the next moment.)
As always, however, the Maggots solved the problem. Magh' had no doubt at all who their enemies were-everybody else. Chip and the rats ran… well, like rats. There had to be some way out of here, surely?
Eventually they bolted down a twisting side tunnel, and then rushed back out again, nearly falling over each other in their haste. One of the biggest Maggots that Chip had ever seen had been coming the other way. Chip'd seen a lot of varieties… he thought he'd seen them all, but this was a new one. He reckoned the grunts 'ud call this one "Maggot-mutha."
"This way!" called Bronstein, as they boiled out of the tunnel mouth. Fluttering ahead of them, she led them into another narrow opening off the main Maggot-way. This time there was no huge Maggot in it. An explosion behind them briefly hardened their slowshields.
"That was one smart bat-move, Bronstein," groused Chip, in the aftermath. The bat had dropped the archway of Magh' adobe behind them with a well-placed satchel-limpet mine. Chip looked around the tiny irregular-walled chamber that was left to them. "This is a goddamn dead end! We're trapped in here!"
The bat's huge leaf-ears twitched. She rumpled her gargoyle face at him, flashing white fangs. "If you were any more microcephalic we could use your head for a pin, Connolly. On the other side of that wall I can hear outside noises. Is it a lack of interest that you have in going there?"
For an answer the rats began digging. Digging like fury. Even the tubby Fal moved with the startling speed that made the rats such powerful, if reluctant, allies in this war.
"Be using your tiny heads," snapped one of the other bats. Behan, surly as always. "We need a shot pattern, not a rabbit warren."
On the other side of the fallen archway, Chip could hear the Maggots starting to dig too.
When they broke through and spilled into the sunlight, Chip practically whooped from sheer delight. Ha! Not even a whining Shareholder could moan about how wonderful the sun looked today. A beautiful blue pinpoint in the sky! Still, he was careful not to look at it directly.
There'd been a time, not ten minutes back, when Chip had thought he'd never see daylight again. The first Maggot claws had been pushing through the debris when the bats had pronounced the shot holes deep enough.
Now, they were out and running. Maggot-scorps and diggers were child's play to avoid out here in this rough and blasted terrain. Quickly, Chip examined the area.
Once this must have been prime farmland. The war had shattered and torn it. No blade of green life showed in the pockmarked and cratered landscape. The Maggots were steadily turning it into Maggot-tunnel land. Chip and his twelve companions had broken out between the walls of two of the massive red tunnel-mounds which the Maggots erected everywhere in conquered territory.
"Can't we take a breather?" panted fat Fal. "Methinks we've got to have at least half a mile's start on 'em."
"To be sure. Rest and die, you fat slacker," said Eamon. He wrinkled the folds of his ugly face in that inimitable bat manner of sneering. "You do know you're going the wrong way?"
"Hell's teeth, maltworm!" snarled Fal. "You flutter-fellows can try going the other way. Half the Maggots in Maggotdom are back there. Besides, look." The fat rat pointed. His stubby little "forefinger" was a blunt digit. Rats could manipulate things with their "hands," but despite the best efforts of the genetic engineers their forepaws were still much less adept than human hands.
The horizon, beyond the walls of the tunnel-mounds, flickered. "We're inside the Maggot force field," hissed Fal. "You know what happens when your slowshield intersects that."
Indeed, they did. You fried. It was the Magh's inviolate defense against human-allied attacks. Every time the Magh' pushed forward, they'd seal their gains like this. For minutes the screen would be down while the Magh' pushed forward. Then the Magh' would be safe again.
Humans and their genetically engineered allies had been forced into World-War-I-style trench warfare by this. Worse, it was just defensive warfare. And for all their efforts, they had never succeeded in doing more than slowing the pace of the Magh' advance.
Still, it could have been worse, Chip admitted. The alien Korozhet had brought the human colonists advance warning of the impending Magh' invasion. And they'd helped defend the capital city of George Bernard Shaw against the first Maggot probes. Even if their FTL ship could not help the humans further-due, according to the Korozhet, to malfunctioning engines-at least they'd brought warning to the colony.
More than that, actually. The Korozhet also had slowshields, and the wondrous soft-cyber implants which had uplifted the rats and bats. The genetic engineers of the colony had "built" the rats and latterly the bats, to flesh out the ranks of the pitifully small human army. Instant genetic uplift was beyond them-but the implants solved that. Yes, the Korozhet had been glad to provide that advanced technology to the colonists-for a price.
And the price was steep, too. The Korozhet had no interest in anything humans had-except a few rare minerals, specialized agricultural products and some small animals which they said were useful medicinal products. It had meant removing precious farmland from food production. Which, in turn, had meant a leaner and even less savory diet for the colony's Vats. Needless to say, in his remaining time as a sous-chef, before he was conscripted, Chip had not noticed any decline in the quality of the Shareholders' cuisine at Chez Henri-Pierre.
He thrust the sour memory aside. The reality of the moment was more than enough to sour anyone.
Chip stared into the distance. "The front lines are a good few miles back that way. We could try to hide back there and break out when the force field goes down for the next push."
One of the rat-girls chittered distress. "Agreed. Our obvious course now-is-to hide." Chip could hear the exhaustion in Melene's voice, and accepted the reality behind it. They had to rest, and soon. The rats had speed, not stamina.
"Why don't we hide out up there?" Chip pointed to a cluster of rocks at the head of a narrow gully, maybe a quarter of a mile away. "If you bats stop fluttering around like a smoke signal, they won't see where we're going."
"We're not good walkers, Connolly," pointed out Siobhan.
"Cling onto me, then. I'll give you a lift." Despite the wingspan the bats were light-boned. Even a big bat like Eamon wouldn't weigh much more than two pounds.
The bats fluttered about him doubtfully. Then Bronstein settled on Chip's shoulder. "I vant to trink your blud." She bared her long white fangs and licked her lips with with a long, thin, red, red tongue.
Chip hoped like hell that that was just bat-humor.
The others settled on him too. " 'Tis a damned affront to my dignity, this," said Eamon glumly, clinging to Chip's left breast pocket. The sharp bat-claws pricked Chip through his combat jacket. The big male was a solid weight of bat, hanging like that.
" 'Tis the blood o' a virgin princess you fancy, Eamon?" chirruped a more cheerful Siobhan.
"Well, you're out of luck with Connolly, then," grumbled Phylla, limping along beside them. "He's as common as vatmuck. Not even a good prince, nor less a princess."
"No virgin neither," piped Melene. "Oft did I espy him a-giving the horn of abundance to Dermott."
"Belike she was giving it to him," snickered Doll. "An abundance of horn going about, anyway. Why do you humans take so long?"
"More like how do they make it last so long…" Phylla looked wistful.
Now, Pistol started whining. "My aching paws!" He peered up at Chip with a solitary beady eye. "How about a lift, Connolly? You owe me a bottle of whiskey, so a ride would be in order."
"A bottle? It was a drink-not even a double!" Chip protested.
"Whoreson caterpillar! A debt dodger. Come on, let's all ride Connolly, like a mare," said Fal, who plainly thought anything rather than walking was a brilliant idea.
Rats jumped aboard and scrambled for purchase, clinging to his head, shoulders, clothing, pack and pockets. Chip sighed and accepted the inevitable. At least even the rats were relatively light. It was no worse than an extra fifty-pound pack.
Like an ambulatory hat-and-umbrella stand festooned in clinging bats and rats, he struggled up the slope to the shelter of the rocks. Fortunately, there was a lot of strength in Chip's stocky form, and even more stamina. But it was still a brutally exhausting slog.
As he planted one foot in front of the other, Chip gasped out his warnings. "I have to… tell you, bats… I take garlic… pills. My blood… pure poison. And you… useless bunch of freeloading… Rat-hitch-hikers… I charge… Cost you all. .. in drinks. Or next time… you can carry me!"
The last phrase came out in a rush. He had reached the boulders. "Come on, all off! I want to sit down."
Rats and bats scrambled clear, and Chip flopped.
"Someone should have a quiet look to see if they're after us yet," said Eamon. "A rat or the human," he specified, folding up his wings.
"Let me just catch my breath first," said Chip. "I'm absolutely exhausted."
"The human condition does not approach the Absolute Notion." G. B. F. Hegel sniffed and adjusted his pince-nez. "Not even remotely. I'm beginning to have my doubts about Plato's Forms, too. A shadow is one thing, but this-this gasping, panting, pathetic-"
"Oh shut your face, Doc. Next time, you can philosophize on your own four paws."
A few minutes later, looking out from their redoubt, Chip stared across a bitter, barren, torn, and conquered land. Miles to the north he could see the smoke trails dark against Harmony And Reason's clear sky.
Har-de-har-har. That would be the front. They were trapped far, far behind enemy lines, sandwiched between the rising red Magh' adobe walls of the enemy tunnels. In excrement deep and dire.
He shrugged and turned away. So what else was new?
Eric Flint
Rats, Bats amp; Vats
Chapter 4:
A maiden in peril.
HER BED WAS ARRAYED with soft toys…
Virginia was the daughter of Shareholders. At the age of nineteen, even in wartime, she should have been out on the town. The social life of Shareholder children was enviable. Instead, she lay on her bed, between Mister Ted and Mrs. Wobbly, and read.
She wasn't ugly. That was just what she believed. Indeed, if she, like her Shareholder-daughter contemporaries, had employed a beautician's services she could have been almost beautiful. Not in the pinup style, admittedly, with her lean figure and elfin face. But, still…
Nor would Virginia have objected to being almost beautiful. Not in the least. Her indifference to her own appearance was simply that of a brain-damaged girl who had never really thought about it. True, the alien Korozhet had repaired the damage a year earlier-or, at least, compensated for it-but Virginia's self-awareness still lagged far behind her new reality. It was starting to catch up, however. She found herself staring at herself in the mirror lately, wondering…
Her hair, for instance, was still braided in the same way that she had had it done when she was seven. Before the accident. For eleven years she'd insisted on keeping it that way. Nobody realized that now she might be prepared to change. So, every morning, the maids braided it.
Her clothes, too, still reflected the choices of her childhood. Her mother had no interest, and the secluded life they'd had "our poor Virginia" live meant that there were no friends to ape either. Nor was there much hope of finding any. Virginia's parents had long since adopted the habit of keeping their daughter sequestered at home. There were appearances to maintain, after all. No proper Shareholder-and her father was preeminent in that number-wanted to be exposed to ridicule. It was embarrassing enough to have a brain-damaged child, without having the creature's slurring words, fits and tantrums exposed to public scrutiny. A seven-year-old mind trapped in the body of teenager was not acceptable in polite society. Not in the least. So, for years before the Korozhet soft-cyber implant had liberated her, Virginia's only friends had been Mister Ted, and Mrs. Wobbly, and all the other soft and fuzzy residents of her soft and fuzzy bed. But, for all their sweet charm and kindly disposition, they were not much help when it came to giving advice to a nineteen-year-old girl beginning to wonder about her place in the world.
So she still didn't have any friends. Well, except for her darling "Professor" and Fluff, the galago. Fluff had been a cuddly pet before he was soft-cyber uplifted.
Her parents regarded her new improved self with vast relief. At least she was no longer throwing her fits and tantrums. Now and then, they even permitted her to join them at the dinner table in their mansion. Lately, as they'd become more confident that she would not publicly shame them, they'd even taken her to dinner in town. Her mother had ordered her Vat dressmaker to make suitable garments for that. Her mother's maid came to make her up and dress her hair for these occasions. The only thing Virginia disliked more than these rare outings was her mother's maid.
But, even so, a low public profile was still essential. What would people say about the Shaws having their daughter implanted with an alien-built nervous system enhancement device? The kind normally used on animals? Even Vats would whisper! (Not that the Shaws paid any attention to what the lower orders might say.)
Virginia didn't care. Much. After all, she had books. And so many! She had a whole childhood's reading to catch up on, in addition to all the adult books. There were real antique paper ones like the volume in her hand, or book-screen ones where she could blow the print up and didn't even have to use her thick glasses.
At the moment, she was devouring Regency romances from Old Earth. The download in her head had included Bronte, at her mother's insistence. Perhaps this had biased her, but she certainly enjoyed historical romances.
Fluff, on the other hand, did not. His objection was not to the genre as such, but to the activity itself. Because of the soft-cyber in the little galago's head it could read. But Fluff considered reading an effeminate pastime-and, what was worse, the wrong effeminate pastime. While Virginia was reading she was ignoring her far-more-important feminine duty, which was to pay attention to him.
He was most disgruntled. Was there anything more important to a macho hidalgo than the attentive admiration of a beautiful woman? Was there anything more natural than that she should adore him?
"Virginia, why do you read-read-read all of the time?" The little creature perched on her head and swung his long tail with its soft fur-ball at the end (that she so admired!) in front of her eyes. He knew that otherwise she wouldn't even notice him.
She plucked him off her head. Huge, limpid, dark eyes set in the tiny face of the long-tailed lemur-like creature stared back into her blue eyes. He blinked.
"So what else do you want me to do, Fluff?" she demanded. She was a bit irritated. Vernon had been on the brink of declaring himself to Frederica!
"Well… You could brush my fur, or"-hastily, seeing the start of a headshake-"we could dance?" This was a real sacrifice on his part. His soft-cyber had left him with a penchant for Wagner. She liked Viennese waltzes for similar reasons.
"Why don't you read a book instead?" she asked crossly. "I'm nearly finished with this one, and-"
"Then you will just start the next!" he protested.
Her door burst open. A ball, three feet in diameter and covered with rows of red-purple spines, came in, ambulating along on flexing spines. Virginia lowered the book and smiled broadly, her momentary pique quite forgotten.
"Professor!" There was no mistaking the delight in her voice on seeing the Korozhet. Most people found the sight of the sea-urchin-like alien somewhat unsettling. But Virginia thought the Professor was just darling. "What brings you here at this time of night?"
"Oh the relief of it! Oh, Miss Virginia! Oh, I am so glad to see you are unhurt!"
Virginia sat up straight, her eyes widening. The Korozhet's voice, transmitted through the device attached to its intricate speaking organ, expressed nothing in its tone. But Virginia, over the months, had learned to interpret many of the subtleties of the Professor's spine movements. (Much more, she sometimes thought with quiet pride and pleasure, than the Professor himself realized.) She had never seen that peculiar rattling of the spines before, but the motion and the noise practically shrieked: anxiety!
She began to ask a question, but the Korozhet cut her off. The Professor was already at her bedside, rattling its spines on the comforter. The hard organo-carbonate points left little tears in the cotton which enfolded the down interior.
"Quickly, Miss Virginia. Quickly! Come with me. We must flee at once."
Virginia flung aside the comforter and scrambled off the bed. "What's wrong?" she asked. But she didn't wait for an answer before gathering Fluff and planting him on her shoulder. An instant later, she was reaching for Mister Ted and Mrs. Wobbly. If it was a fire she must…
"Leave your possessions, Miss Virginia, leave them! It is you who are in danger, not they. Come quickly! We must away! The killers may still be here!"
"Killers?" She stopped.
"Keep moving, Miss Virginia! Your poor parents have been foully murdered! I have just now stumbled upon their corpses. The dreadful manner of their dying leaves me in no doubt: there are Jampad assassins here!"
Virginia gasped. She'd heard of the Jampad, from the Professor. "But I thought there were none of those… terrible things on the planet?"
"They must have approached secretly somehow. Oh, sorrow! That they should kill such worthy citizens!" The Korozhet was now trying to drive her towards the door. Virginia resisted long enough to put on more suitable clothing. She couldn't leave her room in her nightgown, after all. Her parents would be furious if she let the servants see Her parents were-dead? She groped for an emotional reaction, but couldn't find one.
"We must leave!" The Korozhet was starting to rap her legs with its spines, so great was its agitation. "Traitors must have told them that nothing could undermine the war effort more. Oh woe!"
Now they were through the door and into the corridor beyond. The Professor's anxiety had finally transferred itself to Virginia. And obviously to Fluff as well, by the way the galago was clutching her braids. Virginia began hurrying down the hallway. The Professor rattled in her wake, babbling in a rush.
"But at least they did not kill you, my dear! Your father-bless his wise soul-entrusted me, unworthy Korozhet that I am, with a contingency plan he had made against all eventualities." The Professor paused to replenish his wind bladder. "Such foresight! But he said to me in no uncertain terms: `I cannot be too careful, looking after my Virginia!' You were his most precious responsibility!"
Virginia swallowed. It sounded so… so romantic. But the momentary rush of affection for her father vanished almost as soon as it came. As she opened the door leading to the back staircase, she found herself repressing a sarcastic laugh. That just wasn't her father!
By the time she reached the first landing, sarcasm had been swept aside in its turn, replaced by affection for the Korozhet. Such a dear, he was! The Professor, by nature, always gave the best interpretation to everything.
The alien's next words confirmed her suspicion.
"You are his heir, Miss Virginia? I have that correctly?"
"Yes," she replied curtly. They had reached the bottom landing. She paused for an instant, pressing her ear against the door. She could hear nothing beyond. The silence left room for a sour thought. That's my father-worrying about the inheritance.
"It is a strange concept to us group-spawners," prattled the Professor. Frantically, Virginia waved her hand. Shhh!
But the alien seemed oblivious to the danger of making a noise. "I hope I can adequately fulfill your father's trust in me," said the Korozhet, talking as loudly as ever. "It is a heavy responsibility!"
Virginia sighed. The Professor was so absentminded. With a quick motion, she stooped and reached a hand into the mass of spines. It was the work of a split second to lower the volume on the voicebox. Thank heavens for standard controls.
The spines froze. Then, for an instant, bristled. Virginia realized that she had startled the alien. She had never actually touched the Professor before. She began to whisper an apology, but the Korozhet interrupted.
"Quite all right, my dear!" The spines seemed to soften. "I forget myself, you know. I am not accustomed to such peril!"
Virginia pressed her ear back against the door. Nothing. She decided it was safe to go through. Slowly, carefully, she turned the knob and cracked open the door. The action brought a stray and whimsical thought. On Old Earth, she knew, doors were opened by electronic means. But the colony on Harmony And Reason could afford no such complex mechanisms. It would hardly do to find oneself locked in because of the absence of an electronics industry.
She pushed her head through. The large underground garage beneath the mansion was deserted, except, of course, for the multitude of vehicles parked in it. Her father was a collector of such.
Virginia decided to take advantage of the opportunity. She sped across the flat expanse, her light feet making almost no noise at all. Behind, the alien scuttled in its effort to keep pace.
"Can you slow down a trifle?" complained the Professor. "My lower spines can barely cope with this mad dash! Fortunately I do not respire through my speaking-orifice, so I am able to converse with you. Otherwise, I would be quite out of breath."
Virginia reached the vehicle that was her target, and began to open the door.
"Not that one!" protested the Korozhet. "No, no-it will not do at all, Miss Virginia. We must take the off-road landspeeder."
Uncertainly, Virginia's eyes went to the vehicle in question. She had never driven it before. In fact, her parents had never allowed her to drive anything except the golf cart. Which She stared at the vehicle she had been about to climb into. A half-hysterical laugh began gurgling up in her throat. Which, I admit, is probably a ridiculous way to make an escape!
Fluff was glaring at the landspeeder. "I hate that thing! Makes me feel sick!"
His chittering attracted the Korozhet's attention. "You will have to leave that small creature behind," the Professor stated firmly.
Fluff's grip on Virginia's braids tightened. "No! I'll come along and look after her!" He stood up to his full eight inches-but without relinquishing his grip on her hair. "She needs male protection!"
Virginia shook her head decisively. The vigorous motion tossed the galago back and forth, squawking indignantly.
"No, Fluff," she pronounced. "If the Jampad are trying to kill me, you'll be much safer here."
The little hands clutched her hair like a vice. The galago had an amazing grip for a creature so small. "Get down, please," she said firmly.
"But Virginia…"
The Professor was back to its spine-rattling. "We must go quickly! Obey your mistress! Every moment we delay is dangerous!"
Moving with the same decisiveness with which she had shaken her head, Virginia reached up and pulled the galago away. She kissed the tiny monkey on his forehead and set him down on the pavement. Fluff tried to cling to her fingers with his little black hands, but Virginia forced him off.
"Go, Fluff." There was a sob in her voice. The galago jumped away with one of those prodigious leaps the species was capable of. He landed, surefooted, on the fender of a nearby luxury sedan.
As the Korozhet ushered Virginia into the passenger seat of the off-road landspeeder, the alien gave the galago a beady glare from all of the ocelli it could exude from its spines.
"Do not alert anyone!" it said forcefully. "Enemies may be anywhere." Without further ado the alien scurried around the front of the vehicle and bounced in through the driver's door, which Virginia had already opened. For all its awkward appearance, the Korozhet was remarkably agile.
Virginia had also already moved the front seat back, so that the rotund alien was able to fit itself into the space. It studied the controls. "The vehicle has automatic drive capabilities. I should be able to cope with any additional requirements, despite the fact that it is not designed for my species."
"I could try to drive, Professor," said Virginia hesitantly. She hadn't even thought of this problem. From long habit, drilled into her over the years by her parents, she had automatically taken the passenger seat. "I've never done so before, but-" She pushed her nervousness under. "Still, once a course is programmed in, the driver is little more than a failsafe. And I did read the instructions once, when my parents left me in the vehicle alone."
The Korozhet seemed to hesitate. But only briefly. "No. But we will opaque the windows. In case of snipers. There is great danger, and I must take great care of you. You will have to handle the security systems, Miss Virginia! The guards and the automatons will recognize you, and allow you passage. But you must be quick and careful. At least one of the guards must have been subverted to allow the Jampad in. We must give no clue that we are aware of the assassins, while being ready to race away at a moment's notice."
With its manipulatory spines exuding tiny suckers which it flicked over the expensive computerized controls, like a master pianist playing a long familiar piece, the alien set the landspeeder into motion. Virginia was deeply impressed by the sure manner of the movements. If she hadn't known better, she would have sworn the Professor was already familiar with the vehicle. They were so adept at technical matters, the Korozhet!
Despite the Professor's fears, they drove through the impressive security screen of Pygmalion House without any check or hindrance.
Virginia sighed with relief. "Four or five minutes should see us in town. We can take refuge in the police station."
The Korozhet clacked two of its spines in the motion which Virginia had come to interpret as respectful but firm disagreement. "We are not going into town, Miss Virginia. Absolutely not! Your father suspected enmity within the board of directors. He was right, clearly enough. That means the police have certainly been suborned."
Virginia frowned, considering his words. It was true enough that her father had enemies. A multitude of them, in fact, judging from his frequent complaints. But, if the police could not be relied upon…
Her voice was a bit shaky. "Then where-?"
"We must go to the plantation," stated the Professor firmly. It was already keying in the instructions. Within seconds, the vehicle turned onto the highway which led to the plantation, and accelerated. The huge agricultural complex was located far to the south of the capital city.
Virginia gasped. "But-the Magh' advance! On the Vid-news they said, and Papa was so angry, and…"
"Fortunately, they have held back the Magh' advance. Do not be concerned, Miss Virginia! Your wise father foresaw this contingency also. I assure you that his plans for your safety were very well thought out. And now, I must ask you to simply have faith in me. Operating this unfamiliar vehicle will take all of my concentration."
Virginia relaxed. Everything was very confusing, and unsettling. But if there was one thing that she did know, it was that she could trust the Professor. Absolutely. The Korozhet was a rock in the sudden shifting uncertainty of her once-ordered world. Thank heavens the Korozhet had been there, and had been unhurt. She shuddered. If the Jampad had spotted the Professor, they'd have killed it. For a certainty! The Professor had told her many times of the implacable hatred which the Jampad bore for all Korozhet.
She was tired, she realized. As usual, she had awakened early that morning. It was already late in the afternoon. Now that they appeared to be safe, she suddenly felt exhausted. Her eyes began to droop.
As she drifted off, her last conscious thought was of the Professor. Such a dear old fuddy-duddy. Like someone in one of her novels… Like a sort of "nice" version of Lord Bromford from The Grand Sophy.
Virginia was jarred awake by the howling of a siren. She sat up sharply in the seat and craned her head around.
"They're chasing us!"
A pair of motorcyclists were in hot pursuit. Police motorcyclists, or she misunderstood the flashing blue lights and sirens.
"Override! Full manual control!" barked the Korozhet. With a squeal of tires the Korozhet flung the wheel hard over. The vehicle leapt from the road and bounded across a muddy field, plowing through stalks of grain.
"But they're police. Surely-"
"Suborned, Miss Virginia. Suborned! This is just what your father anticipated!" For a creature with a hard exoskeleton covered in flexible spines, who had never driven before, the Korozhet was astonishingly adept at handling the vehicle.
The landspeeder was designed for off-road work. The motorcycles weren't. Within two minutes, the motorcycles were no longer in sight. Within five, even the sound of the shrieking sirens had faded away.
The fear and excitement were making Virginia feel awfully strange. She was reminded suddenly of the nightmarish trips to the ship's surgery, back in that horrible fuzzy time before her soft-cyber implant. She felt… giddy. Very weak. Very confused.
Had she been shot? She couldn't feel any pain, but she had read that wounds could be unnoticed at the time they were received. Shock, or something.
Her head lolled on the seat rest. Her eyes fell on the rear window but, this time, she was not peering intently at the motorcycles on the ground. Just gazing vacantly.
As consciousness slipped away, she caught sight of a tiny, furry face, too full of big eyes. Clinging under the back sunshade of the landspeeder, Fluff looked utterly terrified.
She awoke in darkness. The bed she lay on was extremely hard. Gradually her mind assimilated that it was no bed. A hard surface, slightly gritty in texture. They must have crashed!
Her first thought was for the Professor. Virginia began scrambling to her feet. But, instantly, her head crashed into an unseen surface above. Wincing from the pain, she collapsed back onto her knees.
After a moment, she began feeling around with her hands. The space she was in-whatever it was-seemed very small and cramped. Even in the darkness, she rapidly established there was no ball of prickles in here with her. There was just no room for anyone else.
Reaching up and probing the-ceiling? it seemed too gritty for a ceiling-she rapidly established that there was no room for the Professor to be hanging from the ceiling either.
Sighing heavily, she lay down on her back. Where am I? she wondered. Suddenly her thoughts turned to the last thing she'd seen. Fluff. "Oh, Fluff! My poor baby!"
"I'm here," said a sleepy voice near her ear.
"Oh, Fluff!" she squealed. An instant later, her hands were groping for the galago. But she couldn't feel him anywhere.
"What is happening?" she demanded, fighting to control her rising hysteria. "Where are we? And where are you?"
"I'm here." The galago's voice was alert, now. "There is a sort of air hole here. Hang on, I'll be back with you in a minute."
Virginia heard a scrabbling noise. A moment later, the galago landed on her shoulder and nuzzled her ear.
"Oh, Fluff!" She stroked his furry-velvety little body.
"It's all right, Virginia. I, Fluff, will look after you. Have no fear. Fluff is here!"
"Where are we, Fluff?"
The galago seemed to hesitate. Then: "We appear to be inside the tunnels of a Magh' scorpiary."
Eric Flint
Rats, Bats amp; Vats
Chapter 5:
Way behind enemy lines.
CHIP STOOD AT THE head-end of the old quarry, in plain view of the advancing Maggots. There were more this time. At least there were no diggers. Most of the pursuit seemed to be the long-legged sun-spidery ones. If Chip remembered his sketchy boot camp training correctly, those were the ones called Magh'urz. According to the Korozhet who had brought the warning of the oncoming Magh' invasion, each variant and subspecies of the quasi-arthropods had a different suffix to delineate them.
But Chip hadn't paid much attention at the time, and had never had occasion to regret the loss. As far as he and every other grunt was concerned-Vat, rat and bat alike-Magh' were Maggots and they only came in two varieties: dangerous ones and all the rest. The dangerous ones always attacked and the others never did.
These, as it happened, were dangerous. Which, under the circumstances, was exactly what Chip wanted. But Damn! The stupid bastards!
The things had somehow not spotted him. They were veering away from the rocks, following the route the rats had taken. Chip cursed under his breath. He didn't enjoy being bait, but if he was going to play worm on a hook, the least they could do was notice him.
He took a deep breath and bellowed. "HEY! MOTHER-FUCKERS!"
One of the Maggots paused, as if considering the statement. At face value, of course, the accusation was absurd. As far as human xenobiologists knew, fighter Magh' had no sex life at all.
Chip blew it a raspberry. Now, it was obvious that all the Maggots had heard him. They had all stopped, skittered around, and were staring up at him.
Dammit, do they think this is one of Doc's philosophical discussions?
The last thing Chip wanted was to set the Maggots thinking. They might realize that the bait was bait. But how did he stir them into action? How did he taunt a Maggot?
When in doubt…
The old ways are always best.
Chip turned around, dropped his pants, and mooned them. The Maggots stormed forward, stridulating loudly. Plainly he had at last bridged the Maggot-human communication gap. It didn't sound like it was going to lead to an instant outbreak of peace…
The Maggots were just beneath the shaky cliff-corner. The bats reckoned that one well placed satchel-charge would bring it all down. If it didn't, he was going to have to "please explain" that last gesture to the Maggots.
"Now!"
The explosion sounded tiny. For a moment it looked as if it would be totally ineffective. Chip's legs tensed and his heart sank. Damn those know-it-all bats! Then, with a tiny spurt of dust from the cracks, the entire cornice quivered. And fell.
Even where he stood, three hundred yards off, the ground shook and rocks tumbled all over the quarry.
Bats fluttered up, peering down into the dust. Several of the rats were leaping down already. Only three maggot-survivors had escaped the rockfall. In vain-the bats were swooping upon them.
"Heh. Got nearly every last one of the whoreson achitophel!" Fal rubbed his ratty paws. "Those flyboys know how to use their powder! Got that rockpile right on the G-spot. Did you see how it quivered!"
"Did the earth move for you too, Fal?"
The rat chuckled. Licked his lips. "Well, I must go down and grab a haunch or two before the others snaffle it all. Most of the meat is buried."
Chip shuddered as the plump rat showed what a turn of speed he could display for food. The Company biochemists had said that the Maggots were nontoxic, except for their poison sacs. The rats and bats came from insectivore lines. Even so, eating their enemy…
Chip decided he'd wait until his bellybutton was closer to his backbone.
Ten minutes later, they were legging away across country, the rats showing that table manners were not part of their download.
Chip flopped down. They were now miles further in between the high red walls of the Maggot tunnel-mounds. There was no doubt about it: away from the trench-and-heavy-shelling warfare of the front, the combined skills of the human, rats and bats could lick five times their number of Maggots. Maggots were so goddamn stupid. Well, so was frontal slugging away at each other in trenches. That kind of warfare suited Maggots. There it was numbers and sheer blind determination and ferocity. Out here, in the broken country, even right inside their own backyard, Maggots were getting their asses whipped. But they just kept on coming. That was Maggots for you. They didn't run.
"I've found another fine site for an ambush, indade. Another quarry. Fair number of quarries hereabouts. The Maggots're about an hour off." Eamon was flourishing on this diet of mayhem.
Chip staggered to his feet. "Jesus, Eamon. We can't go on like this. That cliff section you dropped on the last party was brilliant, and we nailed every single survivor. But they're back onto us again. Twice as fast, I'll swear. I've got to get some sleep. You and the rats can manage on half an hour snatches, but I'm running out of steam."
"Sleep. We'll prepare this one. I'll leave O'Niel to keep a vigil." It was a measure of the respect that the sole surviving human had won, that the big bat would even suggest this.
Chip was tempted. Then he shook his head. "We shouldn't split up," he said regretfully. "But I'd love to know how in the hell they keep on following us. And so quickly."
Bronstein had fluttered up, quietly. "It must be the smell."
"Are you suggesting that they smell a rat?"
"Belike they smell a stinking human," snapped Behan.
"Speaking of keeping together, where is the fat rat?"
"And Doll…"
Chip raised his eyes to heaven. "Both of them! We're in the middle of a war. Lost behind enemy lines, with half the Maggot army after us, and fat Fal's chasing tail."
"Envy makes you nasty, Connolly," said Phylla, preening her whiskers.