Eric Flint - The Rats, the Bats and the Ugly

Needless to say, this went down like a ton of building rubble into the judge's swimming pool.

He didn't like finding out that a military animal could not be held in contempt, either, as it was not actually a "person," legally speaking-but then, that's how the judge was trying to speak.

Eric Flint

The Rats, the Bats amp; the Ugly

Eric Flint

The Rats, the Bats amp; the Ugly

Inside the rock beneath the feet of the people.

"You need to see this, Liepsich," said Lynne Stark. "The HAR Times and HBC were things we never counted on. We never made any plans for them. But they've obviously responded to the fact that Cartup is out of the equation and that they need market share. They've jumped onto the anti-Korozhet bandwagon. I'm faxing the front page of the HAR Times through to you. It's also on HBC's Today broadcast. You'll need to move even faster."

When the fax arrived, Liepsich started swearing. "Damn those idiots to hell. Why the hell couldn't they have waited another twenty-fours?"

Spectrographic examinations of metal items taken from the captured Magh' scorpiary and the metal parts of slowshields (shown below) are identical. Metallurgist Dr. Jason Fiennes confirms that this is "simply too improbable."

"The one time in his life Fiennes has to be dead right," muttered Liepsich. "And it had to be today." He picked up the phone. Then put it down again, and left as fast as his falling-down jeans would allow.

HARIT was almost an outgrowth of the old slowship. The ship's hull-metal was still the toughest human-made substance on the planet. The door he entered would have passed for a broom cupboard easily. Indeed, inside were several buckets and a mop.

He used the password to activate the secret door.

"Open Sez Me."

The elevator dropped him into a part of Harmony and Reason that the colony had forgotten. When the ship arrived they'd been justifiably cautious about their Earth-ecology seeded planet. First access had been into the isolation test-chambers below the ship, from whence the portals had dealt with the remote sample vehicles, and later the suited scouts. The test chambers had been built tough. Tough enough to withstand anything the colonists could-or couldn't-think of. Within a month, the initial labs below the ship had been abandoned. Hull-metal and multiple layers of reenforced concrete-plaz lay above. Rock and a Faraday-cage surrounded it. Liepsich still had to marvel at the idea of having the kind of technology that could build something like this… and then abandon it. Harmony and Reason had been close to the Eden that the eco-seeders had promised. There were no inimical land-lifeforms, not even microscopic ones. There was no need for this place, and after that long confined journey onboard the slowship, no desire for anyone to stay here.

The place wasn't abandoned now. When Sanjay Devi had shown it to him, back when the Korozhet had first arrived, only a few key technicians and scientists had come down here. At that stage, the Aladdin cave's entry had been undisguised. They'd started work on hiding it almost immediately. The ship still had treasures-too few to make a difference in the war-but too precious, as Sanjay had said, to give to those idiots to waste. It was down here that the soft-cybers and the slowshields had been researched. It was down here that the first scientists had died of the booby traps. Liepsich still had a piece of the shrapnel in his thigh.

In the last three weeks, a lot of hardware from the captured scorpiary had found its way down here. So had a great deal of the command and control equipment from the ship above. So had a lot of the crew. The crew were the odd-fish in the colony. Granted a single share for their needed technical skills, many of them had stayed with the essential technical tasks that the colony needed them for, in those early years. Some had gone off to try business, or farming. But many had stayed. They were well rewarded and reasonably comfortable-and doing jobs that could only be done with the old Earth-made equipment on the ship.

In the last three weeks they'd mostly been moved down here. It was crowded and busy. It was down here that the "virus" program was being created. In the meantime it was one of the places that no implanted person or animal could be allowed to know existed.

One of the techs saluted him as he got out of the lift. It was getting too damned military down here for his taste.

"Henry." He held up the piece of paper. "You'd better move us to condition orange. The Korozhet are not going to like this. They're not going to like it at all. If they lie their way out we've got some time. If there is no denial within the next couple of hours we've got problems, I reckon."

"Condition orange declared two minutes back," said Henry M'Batha. "We picked it up too."

As Liepsich walked over to the section that held the virus programmers, to see how they were getting on, he sighed. He got the feeling that humanity was riding around in a huge black fog-cloud, that was now turning into a thundercloud… with a lot of thunderheads rolling around loose in it. It was quite a question as to whom they would hit. And there was not a lot he could do about it.

Talbot Cartup looked absolutely nothing like his normal self.

Sanjay Devi found that very satisfying.

"Are you sure that these calls can't be traced?" he demanded.

"Trust me, Talbot. I was in charge of setting up the first telephone exchange here. Neither your call to Virginia Shaw nor to your various henchmen can be traced, Macbeth."

"Macbeth?" He looked puzzled. "Oh. The play."

"The Scottish play. Life often resembles it," said Sanjay, going back to her paper-laden desk. "You'll be safe enough here… till Birnam Wood to Dunsinane doth come," she said wryly.

"Well, I wish you'd give as much attention to my problems as that rubbish. I've sent a request to my contact on the Korozhet ship, but I haven't got a reply yet."

"Patience. You might try calling them up on that communicator of theirs again. You've been Thane of Glamis as the master of the colony Security. When Shaw died… you became Cawdor. Now, offer them enough, and they will make you King."

"You know, sometimes I think you're entirely mad! We don't have a king," he said irritably. Nonetheless, he went to fetch his Korozhet-built communicator.

She looked at him from under lowered brows. "Double, double, toil and trouble." It was a trifle awkward him using a Korozhet instrument, but the room pickups would doubtless still get it. Liepsich's computer enhancement tools back at the ship would take all the feeds and make it an audible recording.

A few minutes later he bustled over, looking far more cheerful. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I should aim for a monarchy. It's a novel idea. It would sort out a few problems."

"So what have you arranged, Talbot?" Sanjay thought that no statement of hers deserved an award for dramatic integrity more. She could only bottle down her disgust by pretending it was a stage performance.

"Tirittit had to take it to their high-spines," said Talbot. "But what they really wanted from Connolly was to interrogate him properly. So, as soon as they've done that, as long as I deal with this anti-Korozhet sentiment, hard, they'll release him. I'll be getting audio-recordings from them tomorrow, reassuring Shaw. I had to give them certain guarantees, something of a more formal alliance and certain… what they call 'levies' of Vats, but they've promised to back me up, militarily if need be. The last thing I thought I'd do was come out of this mess stronger. But I've got the votes of-"