The Rats, the Bats & the Ugly

by Eric Flint

  "Only thanks to your lot getting there. I wish I'd known where the hell you were."

  "I moved my boys into the assault course grounds, except for the ones in that first chopper those bastards shot down. They're dug in there. Then we set up a sort of 'combined arms' group—the new recruits without slowshields and with as much firepower as we could manage to scavenge, the vets with bangsticks and explosives—and went and scouted Webb Fields. We dropped a few smoke-rounds on the crowd, in order to chase them out of that trap. But then we got our mortars taken out, and we've been scouting for an opportunity since."

  Fitz's stood up. "Be ready for lots of opportunity. I plan to kill every single stinking Pricklepuss on this planet before I'm done. I'll give Ariel a funeral pyre worthy of a goddess."

  Van Klomp smiled crookedly. "I don't think the rats have 'goddesses,' Fitzy."

  "They do now."

  Chapter 52

  The ship of slaves and the new slave compounds, outside.

  Yetteth had long since lost track of the time that he'd been a prisoner. In all that time he'd never been outside the ship. Very few of the thousands of Korozhet on the ship ever left the vessel, and, from what he could gather, slaves never did.

  That made sense, of course. Until the Magh'-clients had finished clearing away the humans and the new world was open for Korozhet settlement—or, at least, until all subterfuge had been abandoned—the Korozhet didn't want the humans seeing their existing slaves of many species, or they might just guess what the Korozhet were up to.

  It appeared that all pretense had now been abandoned. Yetteth was one of a group that were ordered to go out to the slave preprocessing station where the humans were being mindwiped. Someone had to move the empty and comatose bodies across to the implant station. It was not an easily mechanized task, and Korozhet did not do manual labor. That was for the lower phyla.

  The alien air smelled sweet. After the naphthalene reek of the ship any air would have smelled sweet, but this was really pleasant. A little dry and rather warm, but certainly something to set the scent tendrils tingling. Yetteth fluffed them out slightly, picking up every nuance as the second force field was dropped and they walked across to the preprocessing station.

  Yetteth nearly earned himself a nerve-lashing. He stopped . . . His scent tendrils flared, nearly doubling in size.

  The breeze brought him a scent he never ever expected to smell again.

  One of the People.

  Female. And she was within a relatively short swing or swim.

  Hastily he walked on, seeing that the overseer was heading back this way on its floater.

  The cage was full of humans. They were still clothed, and their eyes were open. But there was nothing behind those empty eyes. Korozhet mindwiping techniques scoured all traces of memory and existing personality from the brain. For all practical purposes, these "people" were newborn babes. Not even that—fetuses, in a nonexistent womb.

  With a sigh, he began the work he was ordered to do. In low gravity like this, carrying a human was an easy thing for a Jampad. He picked up the first one, a female with yellow head-filaments, and carried her across to the implant-station. Then he came back for the next one. And then the next one.

  A Korozhet hovertank came hurtling drunkenly across the open field. There was smoke trailing from it. The plex-dome was shattered—and Yetteth knew from his own combat experience that it took a huge force to even damage it. Of the normal crew of fifteen Korozhet with dozens of Nerba to man the paralyzers and do the heavy lifting, there was very little sign.

  The hovertank dropped clumsily in front of the preprocessing station. One of the masters got out with a dripping, small, longnosed creature balanced on two spines.

  Yetteth dared not wait and watch, much as he wanted to. He carried the next human across. This was another female, with lips of a peculiar color—like the ice fens of his home planet. Odd. He'd never seen another human with that color lips. Perhaps that was an the result of the mindscrub. The effects of the process were sometimes extreme. Some of the mindwiped humans weren't just comatose, they were dead. He remembered the human woman who had died in the slave quarters. Her lips had gone blue.

  Inside the preprocessing station he was told to put her onto the work surface.

  "Strip the false integuments off her, slave," snapped the inserter.

  As he did so, Yetteth saw that the remains of the small creature lay on one side of the workslab. It had been split in half and the soft-cyber implant was being removed from its brain.

  The Third-instar who had brought the creature in was still talking, clacking its spines in agitation. " . . . ambush. All of Fourth-instar Cattat's crew were killed. This is one of the rebels . . ."

  "I understand that," said the inserter impatiently. "That is why I am removing the implant." The Korozhet pointed a spine at the human female with the odd-colored lips. "I will insert it in this creature, so we can begin an interrogation."

  The inserter noticed Yetteth had finished preparing the human female. "Take this filth away." He pointed a spine at the small, stumpy-tailed creature.

  Yetteth picked up the small creature's remains. Despite many scars on the body, the fur was still very soft.

  Once outside he took a chance, and put it down, gently, in the gathering dark. Nothing that had fought such a fight and managed to inflict such damage on the . . . Crotchets, should be tossed in with the regurgitated remains of Korozhet dinners. He would have burned it with honor, if he could.

  Obviously the Third-instar's concern had been relayed to the High-spine, because Yetteth found himself and the other slaves being whipped and sent back to the ship in haste. The cages of humans were left to their own devices as the hovertank and the Korozhet retreated back into their force-fielded ship.

  * * *

  All life can be expressed as a stream of machine-code.

  This scene is, too.

  "I'd like to test it," said the pimply-faced programmer. "There might be a bug."

  "No time," said Liepsich. "It works or it doesn't work. And down here we'll have no way of knowing. Kill the jamming. We'll have to go with it."

  "The minute we stop they'll send their signal. Anything that has a soft-cyber will turn on humans."

  "That's a chance we'll have to take. We'll be transmitting within seconds, I hope."

  Pimple-face shrugged. It was a lot of weight on nineteen-year-old shoulders. But the best programmers in the colony were terrifyingly young. "Okay, we're ready to rock-and-roll. I couldn't strip out all of the Korozhet terms without leaving gaping holes in the software. The programs would have crashed. So I've inserted a human 'and/if' replace statement."

  "Which human?" said Liepsich, pausing in the very act of hitting the jammer toggle.

  "Oh, he's long dead. One these classical music figures from old earth. Did some melodies that are still around."

  "Quality lasts," said Liepsich hitting the button. "What was his name?"

  "Elvis Presley."

  * * *

  Virginia knew to the microsecond when the jamming transmissions stopped. She'd just been thinking about how incredibly stupid she'd been to let fear drive her into volunteering herself to a cell with rats that were getting hungrier and hungrier, with no sign of more food being delivered, instead of taking her chainsaw and at least having a go at the . . . Crotchets, when it hit.

  Suddenly she knew that she had to get back to the ship. Had to! Had to come and defend the beloved masters. They needed her. They needed her now.

  A weak part of her mind creeled in revulsion and fear. She had just time to see Nym and Doc neatly engineer a slowshield interdiction which cut into the door-metal . . .

  When it all changed.

  She no longer had any desire to run to help any master. Only a vague inclination to do a pelvic thrust. For the first time since Chip had been kidnapped she managed to smile.

  "Right." She took a deep breath. "I hate Korozhet. I want to kill the Korozhet!"

&
nbsp; * * *

  Soon they were walking down the road to the paratrooper base—except of course for the bats who flew above, chanting: "Kill Korozhet!"

  Well. Fluff stood on her head and hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets. "I speet upon hound dog Korozhet," he said proudly.

  There was a solitary sentry at the base. He was the one who had been supposed to bring their next meal.

  "I was just bringing it. Honestly. Just the radio started working again. I've been talking to Lieutenant Colonel Van Klomp. We've got contact with the front. With all the army divisions and the other towns! We'll be bringing reinforcements in. We've got a fighting chance at last."

  "Get on that radio again," snapped Ginny. "And tell him to get his broad behind over here as fast as possible. Tell him it's Virginia Shaw. And tell him I have an answer. Make it quick!"

  Virginia's name still got attention. Less than fifteen minutes later Van Klomp arrived, with a tall, grim-looking scar-faced man. "I thought you were supposed to be in jail," said Van Klomp.

  There was just an edge of tenseness in the gruff voice. Hinting that if she was some kind of trap for Korozhet . . . she would be dead very rapidly.

  "Suspicious minds," said Virginia with a smile. "You can thank Liepsich that that won't be necessary any more. That's why he isn't jamming the airwaves any more. They've broadcast a virus in the last couple of minutes. I can hate Korozhet now. If I can hate Korozhet, I can kill Korozhet. And Lord almighty, I feel my temperature rising."

  "And you couldn't have even said that before," said the scar-faced man. "Well, it came too late for my Ariel."

  Van Klomp's eyes narrowed. "So that bastard Liepsich survived the missile attack. I might have guessed. We've been running medical search and rescue around the old ship. We've only found two bodies so far."

  "Presumably that's what that party of Korozhet were after," said the tall scar-faced man.

  "Yep, Fitz." Van Klomp put his hand on the other man's shoulder. "I know it's no consolation, but that ambush of yours saved millions of other implanted creatures."

  "And I want to take that liberation into the heart of that Korozhet ship, and blow it wide open," said Virginia. "And I am the only one who can. At least we are the only ones who can. But I'm prepared to do it. They believe the implanted animals are coming. And Darleth has told us only implants and Korozhet will get in through the portal."

  "What?" demanded Van Klomp.

  Virginia spelled it out. "Get Liepsich out of his hidey-hole. Get me a transmitter and I'll take it into that ship. If Darleth is right, it's full of implanted slaves."

  Fluff leapt to the floor. "Señorita, you will not. Only fools weel rush in where wise men fear to tread. I, Don Juan el Magnifico de Gigantico de Immaculata Conception y Major de Todos Saavedra Quixote de la Mancha, will go."

  "Oh, we'll come too, Don Fluffy." Doll gave him a lewd wink. "Unless that Sally Lunn hath stalled my variety. She played the strumpet in your bed."

  "Wench stealer," muttered Pistol. "Now there are three hogsheads of whiskey that say I should go . . ."

  "I'm going," said Ginny with a grim finality. "They took Charles Connolly. And I'm going to get him back."

  "And us bats. We're all off to the Korozhet in the Green, baby," caroled O'Niel.

  "Ach. O'Niel. If you could sing like you drink and fight t'would make you a fearsome creature," said Bronstein.

  "If there are enough of you, and you manage to get rid of that force field—we'll back you up. Hard and fast," said the grim-faced Fitz. "Now what we need is Liepsich."

  "Methinks you should try the radio," said Nym. "I'm going to work on my battlewagon."

  "Hmph. You lean unwashed artificer. You love that thing even more than good sack," said Fal. "Now that's what I want. Or maybe that Sally Lunn. Not a golf cart."

  " 'Tis an ill-favored thing," said Nym with a wry pride. "But mine own. And methinks it could pack a fair amount of explosives and radio transmitters."

  "I think," said Melene, consideringly, "that we should pack less of the explosive and more of the Ratafia. We need to contact Darleth."

  Chapter 53

  The Korozhet ship, within its portal,

  and deep within its noisesome bowels.

  "The one thing the Crotchets fear more than anything else is a slave revolt."

  Yetteth's words still echoed in Chip's mind. Perhaps if he'd known that before . . .

  Deep down inside, he knew that was self-deception. Even the smallest bending of the truth had been difficult to near impossible. How Ginny had managed to actually directly defy the compulsion in her head was beyond him. But he knew, after what Yetteth had told him, that out there he'd caused a war. He knew that humans had fought back—and apparently successfully. At least, from what he could tell, the Korozhet on the ship seemed in a bit of a panic.

  He was ready to bet that if she wasn't dead, Virginia Shaw would be among them. Yetteth had seen one dead rebel rat. That could only be one of Chip's comrades. He hadn't been able to work out who it could have been, so he feared for them all.

  Now, with the Korozhet ship in uproar, locked down into battle status, Chip was trying to do the unthinkable. Sabotage. It was as awful a thought as rebellion.

  A slave would sooner die than do that. Well, he could always do both at once, if need be. Chip Connolly had no particular faith in paradise hereafter. On the other hand, he had a lot of faith in his fellow soldiers, and in Ginny. But with a force field between them there was not a lot they could do.

  So he had to remove that obstacle.

  How?

  * * *

  At the council of war Darleth took something of the lead. After all, the Jampad had more experience fighting Korozhet than anyone else. Now that her Ratafia was able to fight—and now that her Lieutenant Ariel had been murdered—Darleth was dead keen for direct engagement.

  So, surprisingly, were the Ratafia. Ariel had earned herself a great deal of respect. And the Ratafia, as an almost entirely rat organization, had discovered honor. It was a concept that the rats tried their best to rationalize around, needless to say.

  "If we let them deal thus with our Capo—why, then there is neither honesty, rathood nor good fellowship in us." Sally Lunn slipped a small dagger into the top of her fishnet stockings. "And a girl like me needs a great deal of rathood. Besides this new computer-virus hath left me feeling all shook up."

  Meilin's Vat Liberation Organization, with a cell and communication structure designed to survive all that the Special Branch could throw at it, had stood up to the Korozhet bombing better than the ordinary civil structures. "We've got lines of communication now and we're organizing. But—and this is a 'but'—if those missile launchers on the ship get firing full pace again we'll have problems. Still, we've found another three thousand two hundred troops who were out on pass when this went down. My people are moving them forward, Major Fitzhugh."

  * * *

  Despite being outranked by several officers, Fitz had simply taken over command and Van Klomp was content to let him do so. "Strategy and tactics are his field, Colonel. When you've been organizing logistics—like you have—you are maybe less good at it than he is."

  "I accept that. But you've also got field-command experience, Colonel. You ought to do it."

  Van Klomp had just shaken his head. "I'm too big, Colonel. Big men like me have simple strategy and tactics in a fight. I wish like hell we had that lance corporal of mine. Connolly. If he was here I'd make Fitz listen to him. He's a small man, but he wins. In the meanwhile we've got Fitzy. So long as we can stop him thinking he's invincible."

  Liepsich had come out of his hidey-hole, insulted them all, and gone back into it to prepare as many radio transmitters with preset virus replays as possible.

  Nym and a squad of mechanics were working on the golf cart.

  "It's not properly speaking a golf cart any more," admitted the sergeant. "The steering, accelerator pedal and the bonnet ornament are still the same. But everythi
ng else—from the chassis to the engine, is either reinforced or carrying so much chrome it's more like a half-baked APC. He's very proud of it."

  The sergeant jerked an oily thumb at an equally oily Nym. "Its amazing how like one of the boys he is. He drinks beer. And we're teaching him about football. I hadn't realized what the critters were like. I thought they were some sort of trained animals."

  "They're more than animals, but they're not the same as people either, Sergeant. Well. Not the same as humans, I should say. I think we're all going to have to start redefining the word 'people.' "

  "Yes, Major. But you can get on with rats. Bats are weird."

  "It's bats that are what is worrying me right now. According to radio reports, at least twenty thousand are AWOL from the front lines. Amazingly, the rats are standing firm against the Magh', but I have no idea if the bats can do the same. Fortunately, the bats can't possibly fly here in time to make a difference, even if the soft-cyber-virus hasn't sorted it out."

  Fitz took a look at Nym lovingly polishing a running board. "Does the rat realize it's not likely that the golf cart is going to survive all this?"

  "Oh, he knows, sir. But it's the first car he's ever owned. He's real proud of it."

  * * *

  Two hours later the golf cart drove slowly onto Webb Fields. There were some seventy-two rats in, around and on top of it. And one human. And two bats clinging like windshield wipers to the candy-striped awning. Ginny knew that just one blast of the heavy-lasers would destroy the golf cart and all of them. They trundled forward toward the Korozhet ship.

  On cue, a fusillade rang out over their head from the far edge of Webb Field. The lasers on the walls of the huge ship above winked on. Ginny winced.

  But the Korozhet fire was being directed at the small-arms fire that was apparently trying to stop the golf cart from reaching the Korozhet ship. Darleth had obviously been correct. The Korozhet could detect soft-cybers. She just hoped that the rigged fusillade had indeed been remote from those rifles. But Fitz and Van Klomp both knew that fire on the ship drew fire.