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Eric Flint: Rats, Bats and Vats

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Eric Flint Rats, Bats and Vats

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He was a bit shocked at how hard that knowledge hit him. It wasn't as if Dermott had had a dazzling personality or been any kind of a beauty queen. Not too bright, really, with a broad Vat face on a big workhorse body. But a nice girl all the same. A very nice girl. A girl with a dream… One more indebted conscript the Company wouldn't be collecting from.

Still, he had to make sure. Maybe He got up and began digging into the rubble.

"You're not going to get out that way, Connolly," said Siobhan.

"I'm looking for someone," he replied stubbornly.

"Nobody would still be alive."

"I know. But I can't just leave her. There's a chance."

"Dermott's dead," said the bat quietly. "A scorp got her, in the middle of cave-in. I saw."

Chip swallowed. He supposed that it had been an open secret. A private life in the trenches was a wild dream. "Are you sure?"

"Sure as breath. It was quick and painless, Connolly."

That was a lie. Scorp poison wasn't. But Siobhan had seen her die. That was plain enough. Poor kid. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and swore quietly to himself.

He sighed, and started to haul clods away behind the digging rats. Every single time you said, "Don't get involved, or, if you're gonna get involved, just keep it physical." But you always ended up exchanging dreams. Dermott had wanted a farm. Huh. A Vat-born indentured girl who wanted a farm! Fat chance. Farm laborer was the closest vatbrats could get. Well. The kid had bought one. And the Company wouldn't be screwing her any more, either. Yep, the only way out of the Shareholders' clutches… die. And then, rumor had it, they'd bill your clone for the burial charges.

"Responsible socialism," the New Fabian Society Shareholders called the system they'd set up on the colony planet of Harmony And Reason. HAR-or, as vatbrats called it, Har-de-har-har. When they weren't just calling it the Company Town.

Chip had been born here-grown here, rather-in one of the New Fabian Society's genetic production plants. Grown in a Company Vat, raised in a Company Nursery, and educated in a Company School. His "parents" were shreds of cryo-preserved tissue some long-dead dreamers had sent off on a slowship to this new "Utopia" among the stars.

Utopia-ha! Even the Shareholders, so far as Chip could tell, didn't believe that crap. At least, he'd heard them whine enough about Harmony And Reason in the haute cuisine restaurant where he'd worked before the war. Not that he'd had much opportunity to listen. He'd been an apprentice sous-chef after finishing Company school, and he hadn't had a lot to do with the clientele.

Still, he'd noticed that the Shareholders seemed to be especially grumpy about the sunlight. To Chip, the sunlight was not too blue, nor too hot. But the older Shareholders weren't local Vat-born clone kids like him. No, they'd been wealthy adults back on Old Earth-philanthropists, they called themselves-and had come along in cryo-suspension. The windows of Chez Henri-Pierre had been specially tinted to yellow the sunlight for them. According to them Earth light had been sweeter and better…

A rude voice interrupted his musing.

"Pull your finger out and move the damn stuff out of the way, Connolly."

Chip shook himself. He'd been falling asleep, he realized. Air.. .

"Dig us an air hole, Pistol."

"So that we can breath Maggot pong? And they can smell us?"

"We need oxygen, you…"

"Better make us some human oxygen out of your own air hole, you muddy rascal! I feel tired and I've got a headache. I don't feel like digging."

"Intercranial pressure because of vasodilation in the brain from oxygen deprivation," said Doc. "The lethargy is caused by raised CO2 levels."

For a moment, Chip was startled by the assurance in the bespectacled rat's voice. But then he reminded himself that Doc had proven, more than once, that he was an excellent medic. At least, when he wasn't droning on about epistemology and ontology and the whichness-of-what.

Chip unlimbered the Solingen. It seemed an effort. Like bothering with perfectly scalloping that last potato of the hundreds… Like that, this had to be done. "Dig straight up, Pistol, or I'll shove this up your ass and ruin your sex life." He noticed that his outstretched arm was trembling.

It wasn't a long dig. Moments later the rat broke through. The Maggot-tunnel air was cool, sweet and fresh by comparison to the stuff in their hole. The one eyed rat took long whiffling-nosed sniffs of it. "So okay, Connolly, you damned dunghill cur. My head already feels better. Maybe I won't piss in your next beer. Even Maggot-air smells good compared to the stuff in here. But don't ever threaten me with that poniard of yours again."

That was one villainous old rat. There were times to back off, and this was one of them. "You can empty your bladder into the next beer I buy, if you like. It'll be yours. I owe it to you, I reckon. Lack of air was making me silly."

The one-eyed rat was mollified. In a manner of speaking. "I'm a whiskey drinker, you skinny blue-bottle rogue. And I like triples. And I never pee in my own drinks."

"Give a rat an inch…" Chip smiled.

"And he'll think you're shafting him," concluded Pistol, with a suitable gesture.

"Will you two be getting out of the way so that we can all have a breath of air?" Eamon grumbled.


Eric Flint

Rats, Bats amp; Vats

Chapter 3:

Behind enemy lines.

SLOWLY, THEY CONTINUED to dig a narrow passage, under the hardpan of what was plainly an ever-growing Maggotway. The rats were fine excavators, but the main problem was where to put the uncompacted material they were digging out. And a rat hole was going to be too small for Chip, although the bats could manage it.

A quiet council was held. "You guys had better dig out. We'd better block that air hole, too. Maggots will smell us out, otherwise. I'll break out and take my chances when you've been gone a while." Chip was nobody's hero-by definition-since he was still a live grunt. Heroes got dead. And the first thing a grunt learned was "don't volunteer." But there didn't seem much point in getting them all killed. They had a tiny chance. He didn't.

"The Maggots up there are building faster than we can dig," grumbled Fal. "My old claws are nearly worn out."

He puffed out his chest. Well, his belly. "Anyway, we'd never leave a comrade in distress." The plump rat even managed to get the words out without choking.

"Never?" asked Bronstein, her voice dry. Rats might be natural Maggot-killers, but they weren't known for suicidal courage.

"Well, hardly ever!" chirped Melene.

"And certainly not one who owes us drinks," added Pistol.

"We've still got a load of satchel-charges between us," mused Bronstein. "We should all go up. We can move a damned sight faster through their tunnels than we can with a fat old rat like you grubbing. And if they try and stop us, we can blow down the very heavens on them."

"The human's right for once," hissed Eamon. "What cause do we have to die for this Company-lackey primate? His kind wanted this war. Leave him."

"Damn you, bat!" snarled Chip. "The effing Company grew me in a vat too. Just like you. I'm an indebted conscript. Also just like you. Get that straight, squashed pig-face. And nobody wants this war, not even the goddamn Company, but if we don't fight, we're all Maggot food. Call me a Company-lackey again and I'll dice you into bat tartare."

The big bat bared his long sharp fangs at Chip and then studiously ignored him.

"He'll be killed on his own, to be sure, Eamon," said Siobhan timidly. She was the smaller of the two female bats, and didn't have Bronstein's self-assurance.

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