Eric Flint: The Rats, the Bats and the Ugly

"Excuse me, Private." It was one of the interviewers and his cameraman. "Tim Fuentes, INB. Am I right in saying that you were actually part of the Special Services force that rescued Ms. Virginia Shaw? Can you tell us about it?"

Chip snorted. He knew that there was no point in feeling hard done by. It was the way of the army and the way of the damned Shareholder class. But he was still furious and hurt about it. "Oh, yes. That's us. Me and these scruffy military animals. But we're not Special Services. We're just a bunch of grunts. We were in the wrong place at the right time."

"I quite understand that the details of your unit and the finer details of your operations must remain secret, Private, but… can you tell us your name? Or is that confidential too?"

"Private Charles Connolly, 21011232334000. That's what captured soldiers are allowed to tell you. And if you excuse me, I've got get back to my unit as quickly as possible. Then I need to find a medium to help me to tell my platoon sergeant that he's to put me on a charge for my appearance."

The reporter and cameraman pursued him as he tried to walk. "Just a few questions, Private Connolly. Did you take part in freeing her? Did the kidnappers put up a fight?"

"Her kidnapper is dead. It was that thing she called her tutor. You could say it put up a fight. It tried to kill her. That's where I got this hole in my shoulder."

"Did you capture the kidnapper?"

"I told you. It got killed."

"And Ms. Shaw, during this ordeal, how did she take it? Was she terribly traumatized?"

Images of Ginny filled his mind: clinging to him after she'd killed her first Maggot; after Behan's death; hanging on to the back of the tractor as it plunged through the Magh'-filled corridors. He turned on the heel-yapping media jackal: "She wasn't 'traumatized' and she fought beside us. She fought," he said slowly, "like a lioness. And now, leave me alone or I will kill you."

By the way they backed off, they obviously believed him… even though Chip didn't really want them to.

"Ahem." Bronstein cleared her throat. "What are you going to do now, Connolly?"

"Go back to my unit as quickly as possible like a good little soldier," said Chip, savagely. "Didn't you hear that nice Shareholder officer? You scruffy military animals had better do the same."

He walked off, blindly.

They followed.

Fluttering along behind Connolly, Michaela Bronstein tried to formulate strategy. Revolution! Throwing off the cruel yoke of human oppression! Liberty, equality and belfry! These were the dreams and ideals that Michaela Bronstein had always lived by, ideals that had governed her, and indeed, all batdom.

Of course, bats, by their very nature, had always chittered and argued about how liberation should be achieved. Eamon Dzhugashvilli was one of the notorious Bat Bund who had advocated straight and bloody murder, blowing every non-bat to kingdom come with as much high explosive as they could lay their claws on, and allying batdom with humankind's foes. Michaela came from another faction, who were considerably more moderate in their approach. Of course, it still involved sending everyone except the bat-people to perdition, but letting them get there on their own, without using high explosive to speed their passage. Well, without using high explosive just for the sake of it, anyway.

Now, with the knowledge that they themselves had been cruelly betrayed by the Korozhet, Eamon had changed his tune. The bats had all been through a Damascene conversion, realizing that the humans and even those feckless rats were their allies in a far greater struggle. Realizing that humans, especially the Vat-class, were victims too, entrapped in debt servitude, and that there was honor, nobility and comradeship in them-and even in those drunken, lecherous rats.

The nascent union and common revolutionary front was just that. Barely new-born. Without care, it would be still-born. She, O'Niel and Eamon had only accepted the facts by having the very unpalatable truth thrust in front of their faces. Now they faced a far harder task than a mere revolution. They must unite batdom with their historical enemy against an unimaginably evil foe.

It was literally impossible for those with soft-cyber chips in their head to imagine evil of the Korozhet. The soft-cyber implants had an inbuilt bias which told them-forced them to accept-that the Korozhet were good, wonderful and to be obeyed at all costs.

Only… English, unlike the Korozhet language, was a slippery thing. Its semantics-the slang, poetical allusions, the spelling quirks-enabled the thinker with a Korozhet soft-cyber implant to work around the Korozhet bias. The "Crotchets," not the Korozhet, were despicable genocidal slavers.

Now they had to convince the rest of the bats.

"We should stick together," said Eamon. "I have no liking for that bunch that have taken Virginia under their wing. No liking or trust at all. I swear I heard someone speak in… Crotchet before she went with them." He bared his long fangs and stretched his new-stitched wing.

"Don't do that." Bronstein swatted the wing down. "It won't be healing properly if you don't rest it."

"Resting is not in my nature," grumbled the big bat. "And I say we should fly after her."

Bronstein shook her head. "No. They'll not stop Ginny. That's true steel there, Eamon. Or do you forget that she, and she alone, could go against the compulsion that the Crotchets have set in our intelligence?"

"Would I ever forget that? That's why we must stand by her, wing to shoulder!" Eamon, as he was wont to do, assumed what he thought of as a noble stance. Bronstein thought it just made him look constipated.

She shook her head. "No. We must bring all of batdom to stand with her. And that is the harder task. Needs must the three of us should go back to the belfries and raise the new revolution."

Eamon blinked. "I had not yet thought of it that way. You are the better strategist, Michaela Bronstein. Force is more my forte."

That was true enough, thought Bronstein. Eamon was a positive genius at mayhem, especially with explosives. But all she said was: "The time for force will come."

"Soon, I hope," said Eamon, stretching the wing again and getting another swat from Bronstein.

"And what of the rats?" asked O'Niel. The plump bat had crossed more boundaries in the field of interspecies friendship than the others. He liked rats, and was becoming positively ratly in his attitudes to good bat virtues. It was a bit shameful, really. The other bats would drink with the rats out of solidarity, because that was how rats expressed it. O'Niel would drink because he liked it.

Bronstein shrugged. "Indade. And what of you, rats?" she asked. "Well, Fal? Melene? Doll? Doc? Nym? Pistol? What of ratdom? Will you be able to call all ratdom to rise beside us?"

"If, when all a vigil keep, the rats' asleep, then well may freedom weep," intoned O'Niel.

"Whoreson," Fat Fal shook his head. "You bats really don't understand rats at all, do you? We're not like you bats. There is no such thing as 'ratdom.' 'Tis every rat for himself and the devil take the hindmost."

"You mean, you're not with us?" snarled Eamon.

Fal yawned. "Well, not if it doth mean hanging by my feet and only indulging in tail-twisting once a year. I would not say 'no' to being invited on that occasion, mind. But if it is a common front against the Crotchet, I'm with you. They're set to destroy the humans, and without humans we would be helpless against our worst foe."

He struggled with the top of his nip-size bottle. "See? This! This evil and fiendish invention, the screw-top! Fain would I have someone with opposable thumbs to open screwtops, or what will the use in looting be?"

O' Neil chuckled. "Then a voice like thunder spake. 'Cry no hurrahs but let the Crotchets quake, we'll fight to the death for looting's sake.' "