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  "O'Niel, I do believe I would be liking some of that brandy after all," said Bronstein, quietly.

  "Indade. I'd be after having some meself," muttered Eamon.

  The plump bat handed them the small bottle. "Drink up. We must go back to our comrades."

  Eamon paused in the act of raising the bottle. "Indade. My fellow bats… forgive me that I ever thought to desert our comrades-in-arms. I was wrong."

  Bronstein choked on her mouthful of vile brandy.

  Eamon wiped himself fastidiously. "That was not called for, Michaela. Now I shall smell like a wino's hat."

  "Indade, and a waste of a foine vintage," grumbled O'Niel.

  Bronstein smiled. "I just wanted you to smell like our rat-allies. Come. O'Niel's right. Let's go back."

  "We can't tell them what we have seen…" said O'Niel.

  "And explain that we came to betray humans-to Chip and Ginny?" said Bronstein, distastefully. "No. Least said, soonest mended. We can fight and die bravely beside them instead."

  "Amen to that!" said Eamon, fervently.

  Eric Flint

  Rats, Bats amp; Vats

  Chapter 38:

  There is just time for…

  "WHERE THE HELL have you lot been?" demanded Chip, as the bats fluttered down from the ceiling. "If I didn't know you better, I'd have thought you'd flown off and left us."

  He turned and began moving toward Ginny and the rats. "We need to have council-of-war, and that needs you, Bronstein. Otherwise these head-plastic-for-brains bastards expect me to make decisions."

  If he'd been setting out to make the three bats look utterly hangdog and guilty, thought Bronstein, he couldn't have done a better job. Fortunately he'd looked across at Virginia, just then.

  "You're a good leader, Chip," Bronstein protested.

  Chip was hearing the words, not the tone. "Don't be crazy, Bronstein. Have you been drinking or something? I'm a grunt. Even Ginny is a better leader than me. When she's not being illogical about her damned Crotchet, that is."

  "Indade, now, that's not true…" began Eamon tentatively.

  "Don't you start defending the goddamn prickle-ball! I don't know what you've got into your heads about that fucking thing." Chip stopped, sniffed. "You have been drinking!"

  "No. I meant I thought you had leadership skills," said the big bat, humbly.

  Chip shook his head in amazement and raised his eyes to heaven. "You're as pissed as a newt, Eamon." They'd arrived at the huddle of rats, Ginny and the galago near the doorway.

  The self-elected grunt announced in a voice of gloom: "Well, folks, we are in excrement deep and dark and dire. Really deep. Twenty feet over nostril. Deep enough to have Eamon getting so totally rat-assed pissed that he's claiming that humans make good leaders."

  "That is an illogical contention," said Doc in a weak voice.

  Melene put her tail protectively over him. "Now don't strain yourself. Rest, dearest."

  Doc gazed rheumily at her. "I've died and gone to heaven." He choked. "That's philosophically awkward. I thought atheists went to hell, even if they'd been blown to bits. Will I disappear if I say to God I don't believe in him? I suppose it is bit late for the acquisition of religious convictions."

  "He's got his wits back," said Fal.

  Nym snorted. "Unfortunately."

  "You leave him alone," said Melene, in voice that could cut glass.

  "Logical extension of the perceptual facts say I cannot be dead and in heaven, despite Melene's most exquisite tail being wrapped around me, because I see Pistol's unbeauteous face. Aspects of heaven and hell belong in mutually exclusive…"

  "Oh shut up, Doc. Have a drink. It'll fix you up." Fal held out a bottle.

  "Indeed, I am in need of that… purely for its restorative properties." Feebly, Doc reached for the bottle.

  Mel swatted the bottle away. "You're not having any of that until you feel better!"

  Doc sat up hastily. "I'm feeling much better," he said, in a far more cheerful voice than his earlier die-away tones. "And I really, really, need a drink. My mouth does not taste good, Melene dearest."

  Fal passed the bottle again. This time Melene made no attempt to stop him taking it. But the scholarly rat didn't take an immediate drink. Instead he passed it to Melene. "Have a drink, my dear."

  Melene managed to look coy, which is quite an achievement for a rat. "I didn't know you cared, Pararattus."

  "Doc, you Bartholomew boarpig! That's my bottle. Get your own bottle or candy!" Fal managed to snatch back the bottle, but not before Doc had had a pull at it.

  Doc shook his head and said, mournfully: "I can't get my own bottle. The Korozhet took my pack."

  "How can you say that?" demanded Doll, hands on her ratty hips.

  Pararattus gave this rhetorical question serious consideration. "It is difficult. But I find if you consider the term Korozhet according to Plato's Forms… then it is quite possible to say that the Korozhet gassed me, and placed me on a pile of explosives. Then, while I lay between consciousness and unconsciousness, it killed Siobhan when she tried to come to the Korozhet's aid. She believed that it was helping me."

  "Oh, nonsense!" piped Fal. "You got hit on the head and you were seeing things."

  "Oft times this happens with too much heavy thinking," said Melene, gently. "Your brain's overheated. Too much blood in the brain. When you're feeling better methinks I have a wondrous way to redirect it." She twisted her tail around him.

  Doc forgot philosophical contentions. "I'm really feeling just fine!"

  "Still thinking the good Korozhet could have done that?" asked Melene fluttering an eyelash at a hypnotized Doc.

  "Er." For a moment Doc wavered. But you don't get to be a rat-philosopher without guts. "Yes. It did."

  Melene looked at him fondly. "It must have been a terrible blow on the head."

  Bronstein wished like hell that she had some of those forms that this Plato must have filled in. Trying to talk around the soft-cyber was leaving her unaccustomedly tongue-tied.

  ***

  "I'm surprised," said Ginny to Chip, forgetting that she wasn't ever going to speak to him again, "that you aren't supporting his delusions."

  He shrugged. "What good would it do me? It doesn't make any difference now, anyway. We're trapped in here. The Maggots will eventually get in and kill us all. That is, unless the bats have found a way out."

  Eamon assumed a heroic bat-pose. "We'll stand beside our good comrades! And bravely fight! Aye, and die too. What can we do more but vow to fight with heart, claw and fang?"

  Pistol looked at the bat with amused tolerance. "Well, methinks we could have a baby Maggot barbecue, get drunk, maybe get lucky, and then, with any luck, run like hell."

  Ginny couldn't help smiling. Bats and rats! "You didn't answer the question, Eamon. Did you find a way out of here?"

  The big bat was silent.

  Bronstein answered for him. "Yes. But not for you."

  The silence spread like jelly.

  Chip stood up. "Well. You lads had better get moving then. Can the rats do it? Or do you have to be able to fly?"

  "Well, maybe with that cord," said O'Niel. " 'Tis a vertical shaft, to be sure. But a human wouldn't fit."

  "And where do you come out at the end?" asked Virginia. She was stroking Fluff, who had started to shiver.

  Eamon shrugged. "Indade, we have no idea. We didn't go all the way."

  Chip snorted. "How like bats, eh, Fal? I wonder if that comes under the heading of rat-teasing."

  He got no response from the plump rat, except for a slight twitch of a smile, which immediately disappeared. In fact, nobody said anything. So Chip continued. "Well, fortunately I grabbed that roll of cord. What's left of it is in that fertilizer bag. I'd guess there must be at least seventy yards left on the reel."

  "Well, we could get the rats up to the shaft with that," said Bronstein slowly. "Then we're coming back."

  O'Niel took a pull at his bottle and began to quaver in
a mournful tenor, "I had four belfries and each one was a jewel…"

  "Ah, well," said Fal. "I'm too heavy for that cord, really. The rest of you'd better get on with it."

  "To Lucifer's privy with that idea," said Nym. "For myself, I can't see the point of being stuck at the bottom of a shaft. As well to be stuck here."

  Rat after rat chimed in with perfectly ridiculous excuses not to leave. Doll said there wouldn't be room for their drink, and Melene claimed to be scared of heights. Pistol said he'd be gone like a shot, but Chip owed him a hundred cases of whiskey, and the minute he was out of sight the damned bilker would do something to get out of it.. . Die, or something equally careless. While this went on the three bats continued with their dirge-like renditions of bat-adapted revolutionary songs, until the last rat had finished.

  Well, all the rats except Doc had finished.

  The rat-philosopher stood up, a solicitous Melene holding his arm. "ENOUGH!" he said in a voice like thunder, loudly enough to impress even the galago. "I will have none of this sophistry and these silly excuses!"

  "Well, we'll take you up to the first stage," said Bronstein.

  Doc looked down his long nose at her. "I didn't say I was going. I just said I would have none of this pretense."

  "I'm sorry guys. But you're all going." They hadn't heard Chip speak in that tone of voice before.

  Doc looked at Chip. "We rats are not naturally brave, or loyal. We're fast, and we're good Maggot killers. But our loyalty can be earned. You've earned it. We won't leave you."

  Chip found speaking difficult. "I'm grateful. And I would hate to leave you guys. Honest. I've… I've sort of forgotten that you aren't really human. Hell. I think you're… better than human." He paused. "But you must get out. You must. Ginny and I can't. Firstly, you must get back over the lines. All the Maggots in creation are around here, nowhere else. If you go right now and hide just inside the shield, some of you should manage to get out when it goes up. You bats especially. You should be able to tell our side so much. Stuff that'll keep grunts who are just like me and Gin-Dermott alive. And. .. you could tell them Doc's story. I'm not saying anyone will believe you. Just tell them."

  He sighed. "Secondly, if you feel that way about leaving Ginny and me, we feel just as bad about you staying. Hey, Ginny?"

  Behind her glasses her eyes sparkled with tears. "Yes. Go. Please. Please, please go. I couldn't bear it if any of you stayed. You all been my first ever real… friends. And Chip is right. So many sacrifices have been made to get us this far. For Phylla, Siobhan, and Behan's sake you must get back to the human side of the lines. For our sakes too. Don't let all of this be in vain. Please… dear friends."

  There was another one of those jellylike silences.

  Then Eamon said. "You're right, indade. We'll get the rats out, and then return to stand by you. Wing to shoulder, eh!"

  Chip shook his head gently. "No, Eamon. You must go with them. Without you bats they'd have no chance. You couldn't abandon them while there was still hope, could you? With you, especially you, because you are biggest and bravest, they have some chance. We know we can trust you and rely on you."

  The big bat promptly hid his wrinkled face in his wings.

  ***

  The farewells were done. The bats had taken the line up to the ventilation hole.

  Fluff had just clung to Virginia's neck, big eyed and miserable. Besides the contents of sixteen Molotov-cocktail bottles, every single rat except Doc had given Chip a bottle. The thought that the two of them would at least not have to die sober appeared to mean a great deal to Fal. Doc had made up for his lost alcohol with a snippet of philosophical thought that Chip would have found comforting and brilliant… if he'd understood one word in ten.

  Finally, they went.

  Eamon had fluttered down at the last, when the cord had already been pulled up. "If we do get back… we'll immortalize you in song. Batdom will never, never forget you."

  They were left staring at the roof. Finally, Chip sighed, and drew the Solingen.

  "What are you planning to do with that?" she asked, her voice a little tight.

  "I dunno. See if I can sharpen it? Maybe I'll get a few more Maggots with it that way."

  "What does it really matter?"

  "I dunno. I couldn't just give up."

  "Um." She spoke now in a very small voice. "I've got something to give to you." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small shapeless lump of what might once have been silver paper. "Melene.. . gave me this to give to you." Her voice was almost inaudible.

  Chip looked at it. "Er. Just what is it?"

  She looked into his eyes. He saw there were tears starting in the corners of her eyes again. She sniffed. "It was her most precious possession. She'd… only ever had one before." Ginny's chin quivered. "It… it was a chocolate."

  Chip stared at her, open mouthed.

  Ginny sniffed determinedly. "Rats don't really understand. I told her, you… Uh… Anyway, she said I must give it to you. She insisted."

  Chip took Ginny in his arms. "Quite a girl, that rat," he said reverently.

  She sniffed and held tightly to his tunic. "She's the first girlfriend I've ever had. And she was the best I could wish to have. She said not to waste this time…"

  "Funny, that's what Nym, Pistol and Doc said. Fal said I should get drunk too, but not too drunk."

  Ginny gave a choke of laughter. "Do you know that was almost exactly what Doll said?"

  Chip grinned at her. "I can well believe it. That's one wild, bad rat-girl, that!"

  She looked at him with big serious eyes and said quietly, "I'm not a wild, bad girl, Chip." She looked down and then looked him straight in the eye. "I don't know what to do. I've never even been kissed before. I don't want die before I've even been kissed properly."

  "But all you Sharehol-" Fortunately, this time he caught himself. "This is how you do that."

  After some considerable time had passed, he managed to speak. "Seeing as we are going to die anyway, why don't we go ahead and take the rest of that rat advice?"

  She opened her eyes and looked at him. "Oh, yes. Oh, yes!"

  He looked up. "Well. Let's move away from here a little. I wouldn't put it past Eamon to come back. He really wasn't happy about leaving. And he has a habit of doing his own thing."

  Eric Flint

  Rats, Bats amp; Vats

  Chapter 39:

  The waiting.

  THIS WAS ALWAYS the worst part. The waiting. Fitz hated it with a passion. The sky was definitely pale now. He looked at his watch for the third time in as many minutes. At first it had been… like going back to boarding school. What had really got to him was the smell. Somehow, perhaps because all vertebrates were once scent oriented, that stirred deeper and more evocative memories than anything else. In the dark, the smell had been especially noticeable. Mud, feet, urine, humanity, and the sharper animal scents of rats and bats, along with the smell of fear. Yes. Fear smelled.

  But he'd come over the top. Out of the trenches, walking, with no enemy to fear. As long as he stayed between the flag-and-cord marked lines he was safe from those AP mines too.

  Colonel Nygen had demanded an explanation during the drive. "It's simple, Colonel," said Fitz. "Part of the Magh' front line has been deserted. They've pulled all their troops back inside the shield to deal with a problem. Some of our MIAs have gone on the rampage in there."

  The colonel was silent for a bit. "Are you sure?"

  Fitz nodded. "Absolutely certain. Your precious Charlesworth had a request for support from sector Delta 355 when Colonel Abramovitz moved his men in about midnight. I checked with Lieutenant Guerra, your comm officer. He got his ass chewed for waking up the brigadier."

  "Stupid bastard," Nygen said grimly. "No bloody wonder HQ sent you down." He turned his head. "Driver. You never heard me say that."

  "Sah!" said the big Vat.

  Nygen continued. "Good-but what I actually meant was about the MIAs. I mean, to
pull the Magh off a whole sector… "

  Fitz interrupted. "Colonel, we've been able to follow them with satellite tracking. They got hold of a vehicle and, heaven knows how, a hell of a lot of explosives. You won't believe how hard they've knocked that scorpiary."

  The driver nearly had the ten-ton truck off the road. "Shit! You mean some of ours are alive on the wrong side of the line? Oh! Sorry, sir. Spoke out of turn, sir. Lost some friends, sir."

  "If you don't mention speaking out of turn, I won't," said Fitz, dryly. "And don't get your hopes up for your friends. I don't know what the boys back there got into their heads, but they've tried a suicide mission. We think they're trying to blow the shield-generator."

  "But you should have seen the explosions they pulled so far on the satellite pics," said Ariel enthusiastically.

  Colonel Nygen's tone was sharp. "What does HQ think they're playing at? We're been dragged out in the small hours for this? Those MIAs are never going to succeed. That must surely be the most guarded installation…"

  "Colonel, succeed or not, we've occupied their lines," Fitz snapped. "Do you know how often we've managed to do that in this war? Three times. And never across a whole sector."

  "We'll never hold it," said Nygen sulkily.

  Fitz ground his teeth. This sort of thinking was ingrained. "We're not going to try. When that force field comes up we're going to punch columns hard into their force-field area."

  It had sounded convincing back then. Now, waiting in the predawn, he could have used some convincing himself. His bangstick rested against the invisible inviolate barrier. Human gunners had proved that the Magh only raised it about three feet. And on average for less than two minutes.

  "Have you got any booze with you?" asked Ariel.

  ***

  Bobby Van Klomp was no better at waiting. And there'd been nothing from the satellite crowd for over an hour now. He sighed and checked his gear one more time. His own guess was that the wheels would start to come off Fitzy's crazy plans anytime after six. Maybe earlier, but certainly not later than seven-thirty. He'd have his men in the air at six-thirty. Early, but not ridiculous enough for anyone to question. He could keep them out for as long as possible.