Eric Flint: Rats, Bats and Vats

"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.

They were nearly flattened by seven of the long-legged Maggots they'd seen foraging, busy collecting literally every scrap of organic material. The running creatures paid them no attention, but ran on, fleeing as if their trousers were afire.

The bats were still fluttering in confusion and the rats scampering for cover when the reason for the panic came blundering through, stridulating blue murder. It was an eighth Maggot. And its trousers were on fire. Well, its hind-end was alight, anyway. Maggots didn't wear trousers, or anything else for that matter.

"Man, look at that thing go!" cheered Nym.

"Got its afterburners on!" sniggered Pistol.

Even Eamon was impressed. "Indade, 'tis not often you be seeing them from behind."

"Not often!" Melene was smiling toothily. "Why, Fal said he'd give up drinking if he ever saw one run away."

Pistol curled his own thin lips in the savage way that showed amusement. "And you said the only way he'd see them run was to give up drinking in the first place. To which he replied that he'd see a lot of other things too if he did. And then you-"

"We'd better go and look for those rats," interrupted Chip, scrambling to his feet.

The bats located the portly rat and Doll not seventy yards away, in a neat little hideaway that Fal had plainly organized. He and Doll were still lying on Chip's jacket, their tails entwined. Chip hadn't even noticed that the rat had stolen the jacket. The two were alive, and intact… it was just their wits that seemed to have gone begging.

For once even the fat rat was at a loss for words. And the brassy Doll's voice quivered when she finally found it. Her first question was addressed to Fal. "Art thou not hurt i' the groin?"

Fal just stared wide-eyed. Finally he shook himself. "I' faith that was bad timing!" The fat rat shook his head, untwisted his tail, stood up, and stared at the broken glass. " 'Tis a great waste," he mourned.

Pistol poked him in the gut. "Your waist is very great-but just what did you do to those whoreson Maggots?"

Fal paid the questioning Pistol no attention, and instead scrabbled among the rocks. "My lighter! It's got to be here somewhere."

Chip leaned over and picked up a pseudo-antique zippo. The gadget was designed for rats: smaller, overall, than the human version, but with an oversized striker to suit the relatively clumsy "fingers" of a rat's forepaws. It was inscribed: Ours is not to do or die, ours is but to smoke and fly. In some ways, rats were sticklers for tradition.

"That's mine!" cried Fal.

"And that is my jacket you swiped for your little bit of private whoopee-nest," said Chip, grimly. "Now, let's have the story."

"Gimme."

"Story." Chip held the lighter up, out of reach, and then, when Fal bared his teeth, he tossed it to the fluttering Bronstein.

"All right," muttered Fal. "Give it and I'll tell you. That's a genuine heirloom, that lighter."

Chip jerked his jacket out from under Doll. "After he's told us, hey, Bronstein."

"If ever," said the bat.

The plump rat glowered at them. "All right. Well, we just slipped off for a bit of… privacy, and I was just lighting up, after, when this Maggot stuck his face in. Well, I thought we were dead… . Doll threw my bottle of 160 proof." Fal looked at her reproachfully. "She missed. It hit that rock over there, broke and showered over the Maggot. The falling liquor was slow enough to go through the thing's slowshield, obviously. Then I must have lost my grip on my lighter."

"Panicked and threw it when he was trying to get up and run," interpolated Doll, obviously feeling more like her usual obstreperous self again.

"WOOF… next thing the Maggot took off like…"

"Like its tail was on fire."

"Exactly. Now can I have my lighter back?"

"I guess. So you're giving up drinking, Fal? Now that you've seen one run?" Bronstein asked.

The rat's whiskers drooped. He looked mournfully at the broken glass. "For now I am."

There were easily twice as many Maggots this time. They took one look at the quarry and, even with Chip playing bait, did not enter it but set off around. Chip and the rats and bats had to flee, the trap unsprung.

"They knew," said Bronstein, clinging to Chip's shoulder again.

Chip shook his head. "But how? We killed every single one, last time"

"Comms," the bat said, quietly.

"But they don't carry anything." It was true enough. By comparison the naked bats and rats were overdressed. They carried small packs and bandoliers. No Maggot lugged any hardware at all.

Bronstein gave the bat equivalent of a grimace. If anything, it improved that face. "Not that we've seen, anyway."

"Where could they hide them? I mean between you and the rats you've eaten whole Maggots. If there was anything there you'd have found it." Chip grinned wryly. "The rats would have shat it out by now. Like they do the slowshields."

"Maybe they're built into the slowshields," she said pensively, rubbing her chest over the spot where her own slowshield was implanted. "Ours don't have anything like that, but…"

Chip shrugged, nearly dislodging her. "Well, whatever it is, they communicate. Even when they're dying. And even if we win every fight, we're getting into a worse and worse situation, Bronstein."

The bat looked around at the tunnel-mounds that walled in the half mile wide strip of wasteland they'd found refuge in. The mounds were higher, and the strip narrower. "We need to break out of here," she said.

Chip voice reflected his tiredness. "We need to stop being chased."

"They won't stop until we're dead," mused Bronstein. Her face folds wrinkled even further. Chip thought that if there was anything in the world uglier than a bat's face, it was the face of a thinking bat. Then she said slowly… "So maybe we should die for them, then. Let them tell their commanders we're dead."

Chip snorted. "What do you suggest? We hold them over a fire and make them say: `The enemy are dead, Commander'?"

"Something like that," muttered Bronstein. "I'll think of something…"

The next ambush centered on a roll of barbed wire, either a relic of the war or a leftover from when this had been farmland. It was impossible to tell. What had once been fertile fields dotted by the occasional farmhouse had been completely ravaged-first by the fighting, and then by the typical Magh' methods of expanding their scorpiaries.

The party of Maggots that were closest and had to be ambushed were foragers or scouts. Probably scouts, because there was nothing left to forage. This area had already seen intensive work from the foragers. Not so much as one blade of grass survived. The Magh' always removed any organic material and stowed it somewhere in their scorpiaries. Metal scraps, however, were usually ignored.

Hence the roll of barbed wire that Chip had literally stumbled upon.