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.
"Indade." Again, Eamon flashed his teeth. "And so will we all be, waiting for him. Is it not fair that one of these humans that put us all in bondage repay us with a distraction? I say, bat-comrades-in-arms, that we put it to the vote!"
"To Lucifer's privy with you and your vote," grunted Nym. "I'm going up." Nym was a veritable giant among rats, fully sixteen inches high. He seldom spoke, but when he did the other rats paid attention. Even the bats—even the belligerent Eamon—were careful not to aggravate Nym.
The one exception was Doc. The pedant-rat eyed Nym beadily and said: "Dolt. You forget the overriding precedence of epistemology."
Nym stared back at him. For some odd reason, Doc never irritated Nym the way he did everyone else.
"Huh?" Chip looked at him, puzzled.
Doc sniffed. "In layman's terms—" He pointed at the roof with a stubby rat digit. "The enemy is coming."
There was instant silence. Then someone said: "Fighters, too, from the sound of 'em. Lots of Maggot-scorps. They must have smelled us . . ."
"Out of the way." Bronstein waddled forward, moving as clumsily as the bats always did on the ground. She carried one of the bombardier-bats' small satchel-charges in her wing-claws. "I'll blow the roof and we'll run."
"Give it," said Pistol. "I'll shove it up the air hole. I can move faster than you."
"Okay. I'll put the timer on seven seconds. When she blows, be ready to run. Chip, you take that bag over there. There's half a platoon's worth of spare bat-mines in it. We might need them."
The debris was still falling when the surviving platoon members—one human, five bats, and seven rats—scrambled out of the hole.
They found themselves inside a roofed-over but plainly incomplete Magh' tunnel. It was cathedral high and filled with a tracery of mud beams at angles that were . . . wrong to the human eye. Maggots didn't work in straight lines or precise angles. The material resembled adobe, but the Maggot version was a lot stronger.
" 'Ware Maggots!" In the pallid greenish light of Maggot lumifungus on the walls, Chip could see a column of the scorpion-digger Magh' skittering closer down the passage. The bats were already flapping upwards in the high tunnel. At least they'd have a chance, now that they had flying room.
" . . . Off to Dublin in the green! Our bayonets a-gleamin' in the sun!" shrieked Eamon, diving on the Maggot-scorp column. He wasn't going to run . . . or fly from the enemy. The big male bat might be dead set on treating humans like shit, but he liked to fight, especially against the odds.
Well, Chip knew bats were like that. Crazy. After brewing up the cyber-enhanced rats, the genetic engineers at the New Fabian Society's labs had tried for more heroic and idealistic helpers for mankind's war when the bats' soft-cyber units were downloaded. They had put Irish revolutionary songs and old "Wobbly" tunes into the bats' vocabulary memory units.
Truth to tell, the bats were more idealistic and courageous than the rats. A lot more. But, in Chip's opinion, they were even more off-the-wall. And they were prone to endless political theorizing and disputation.
The rats claimed it came from hanging upside down and getting too much blood to the head—not to mention abstaining from drink and having sex only once a year or so. Chip thought the problem might be simpler. The bats didn't know if their enemies were the humans or the Maggots. (Neither did the rats, he suspected—but, ratlike, they didn't worry much about anything beyond the next moment.)
As always, however, the Maggots solved the problem. Magh' had no doubt at all who their enemies were—everybody else. Chip and the rats ran . . . well, like rats. There had to be some way out of here, surely?
Eventually they bolted down a twisting side tunnel, and then rushed back out again, nearly falling over each other in their haste. One of the biggest Maggots that Chip had ever seen had been coming the other way. Chip'd seen a lot of varieties . . . he thought he'd seen them all, but this was a new one. He reckoned the grunts 'ud call this one "Maggot-mutha."
"This way!" called Bronstein, as they boiled out of the tunnel mouth. Fluttering ahead of them, she led them into another narrow opening off the main Maggot-way. This time there was no huge Maggot in it. An explosion behind them briefly hardened their slowshields.
"That was one smart bat-move, Bronstein," groused Chip, in the aftermath. The bat had dropped the archway of Magh' adobe behind them with a well-placed satchel-limpet mine. Chip looked around the tiny irregular-walled chamber that was left to them. "This is a goddamn dead end! We're trapped in here!"
The bat's huge leaf-ears twitched. She rumpled her gargoyle face at him, flashing white fangs. "If you were any more microcephalic we could use your head for a pin, Connolly. On the other side of that wall I can hear outside noises. Is it a lack of interest that you have in going there?"
For an answer the rats began digging. Digging like fury. Even the tubby Fal moved with the startling speed that made the rats such powerful, if reluctant, allies in this war.
"Be using your tiny heads," snapped one of the other bats. Behan, surly as always. "We need a shot pattern, not a rabbit warren."
On the other side of the fallen archway, Chip could hear the Maggots starting to dig too.
When they broke through and spilled into the sunlight, Chip practically whooped from sheer delight. Ha! Not even a whining Shareholder could moan about how wonderful the sun looked today. A beautiful blue pinpoint in the sky! Still, he was careful not to look at it directly.
There'd been a time, not ten minutes back, when Chip had thought he'd never see daylight again. The first Maggot claws had been pushing through the debris when the bats had pronounced the shot holes deep enough.
Now, they were out and running. Maggot-scorps and diggers were child's play to avoid out here in this rough and blasted terrain. Quickly, Chip examined the area.
Once this must have been prime farmland. The war had shattered and torn it. No blade of green life showed in the pockmarked and cratered landscape. The Maggots were steadily turning it into Maggot-tunnel land. Chip and his twelve companions had broken out between the walls of two of the massive red tunnel-mounds which the Maggots erected everywhere in conquered territory.
"Can't we take a breather?" panted fat Fal. "Methinks we've got to have at least half a mile's start on 'em."
"To be sure. Rest and die, you fat slacker," said Eamon. He wrinkled the folds of his ugly face in that inimitable bat manner of sneering. "You do know you're going the wrong way?"
"Hell's teeth, maltworm!" snarled Fal. "You flutter-fellows can try going the other way. Half the Maggots in Maggotdom are back there. Besides, look." The fat rat pointed. His stubby little "forefinger" was a blunt digit. Rats could manipulate things with their "hands," but despite the best efforts of the genetic engineers their forepaws were still much less adept than human hands.
The horizon, beyond the walls of the tunnel-mounds, flickered. "We're inside the Maggot force field," hissed Fal. "You know what happens when your slowshield intersects that."
Indeed, they did. You fried. It was the Magh's inviolate defense against human-allied attacks. Every time the Magh' pushed forward, they'd seal their gains like this. For minutes the screen would be down while the Magh' pushed forward. Then the Magh' would be safe again.
Humans and their genetically engineered allies had been forced into World-War-I-style trench warfare by this. Worse, it was just defensive warfare. And for all their efforts, they had never succeeded in doing more than slowing the pace of the Magh' advance.
Still, it could have been worse, Chip admitted. The alien Korozhet had brought the human colonists advance warning of the impending Magh' invasion. And they'd helped defend the capital city of George Bernard Shaw against the first Maggot probes. Even if their FTL ship could not help the humans further—due, according to the Korozhet, to malfunctioning engines—at least they'd brought warning to the colony.
More than that, actually. The Korozhet also had slowshields, and the wondrous soft-cyber implants which had uplifted the rats and bats. The genetic engineers of the colony had "built" the rats and latterly the bats, to flesh out the ranks of the pitifully small human army. Instant genetic uplift was beyond them—but the implants solved that. Yes, the Korozhet had been glad to provide that advanced technology to the colonists—for a price.
And the price was steep, too. The Korozhet had no interest in anything humans had—except a few rare minerals, specialized agricultural products and some small animals which they said were useful medicinal products. It had meant removing precious farmland from food production. Which, in turn, had meant a leaner and even less savory diet for the colony's Vats. Needless to say, in his remaining time as a sous-chef, before he was conscripted, Chip had not noticed any decline in the quality of the Shareholders' cuisine at Chez Henri-Pierre.
He thrust the sour memory aside. The reality of the moment was more than enough to sour anyone.
Chip stared into the distance. "The front lines are a good few miles back that way. We could try to hide back there and break out when the force field goes down for the next push."
One of the rat-girls chittered distress. "Agreed. Our obvious course now—is—to hide." Chip could hear the exhaustion in Melene's voice, and accepted the reality behind it. They had to rest, and soon. The rats had speed, not stamina.
"Why don't we hide out up there?" Chip pointed to a cluster of rocks at the head of a narrow gully, maybe a quarter of a mile away. "If you bats stop fluttering around like a smoke signal, they won't see where we're going."
"We're not good walkers, Connolly," pointed out Siobhan.
"Cling onto me, then. I'll give you a lift." Despite the wingspan the bats were light-boned. Even a big bat like Eamon wouldn't weigh much more than two pounds.
The bats fluttered about him doubtfully. Then Bronstein settled on Chip's shoulder. "I vant to trink your blud." She bared her long white fangs and licked her lips with with a long, thin, red, red tongue.
Chip hoped like hell that that was just bat-humor.
The others settled on him too. " 'Tis a damned affront to my dignity, this," said Eamon glumly, clinging to Chip's left breast pocket. The sharp bat-claws pricked Chip through his combat jacket. The big male was a solid weight of bat, hanging like that.
" 'Tis the blood o' a virgin princess you fancy, Eamon?" chirruped a more cheerful Siobhan.
"Well, you're out of luck with Connolly, then," grumbled Phylla, limping along beside them. "He's as common as vatmuck. Not even a good prince, nor less a princess."
"No virgin neither," piped Melene. "Oft did I espy him a-giving the horn of abundance to Dermott."
"Belike she was giving it to him," snickered Doll. "An abundance of horn going about, anyway. Why do you humans take so long?"
"More like how do they make it last so long . . ." Phylla looked wistful.
Now, Pistol started whining. "My aching paws!" He peered up at Chip with a solitary beady eye. "How about a lift, Connolly? You owe me a bottle of whiskey, so a ride would be in order."
"A bottle? It was a drink—not even a double!" Chip protested.
"Whoreson caterpillar! A debt dodger. Come on, let's all ride Connolly, like a mare," said Fal, who plainly thought anything rather than walking was a brilliant idea.
Rats jumped aboard and scrambled for purchase, clinging to his head, shoulders, clothing, pack and pockets. Chip sighed and accepted the inevitable. At least even the rats were relatively light. It was no worse than an extra fifty-pound pack.
Like an ambulatory hat-and-umbrella stand festooned in clinging bats and rats, he struggled up the slope to the shelter of the rocks. Fortunately, there was a lot of strength in Chip's stocky form, and even more stamina. But it was still a brutally exhausting slog.
As he planted one foot in front of the other, Chip gasped out his warnings. "I have to . . . tell you, bats . . . I take garlic . . . pills. My blood . . . pure poison. And you . . . useless bunch of freeloading . . . Rat-hitch-hikers . . . I charge . . . Cost you all . . . in drinks. Or next time . . . you can carry me!"
The last phrase came out in a rush. He had reached the boulders. "Come on, all off! I want to sit down."
Rats and bats scrambled clear, and Chip flopped.
"Someone should have a quiet look to see if they're after us yet," said Eamon. "A rat or the human," he specified, folding up his wings.
"Let me just catch my breath first," said Chip. "I'm absolutely exhausted."
"The human condition does not approach the Absolute Notion." G. B. F. Hegel sniffed and adjusted his pince-nez. "Not even remotely. I'm beginning to have my doubts about Plato's Forms, too. A shadow is one thing, but this—this gasping, panting, pathetic—"
"Oh shut your face, Doc. Next time, you can philosophize on your own four paws."
A few minutes later, looking out from their redoubt, Chip stared across a bitter, barren, torn, and conquered land. Miles to the north he could see the smoke trails dark against Harmony And Reason's clear sky.
Har-de-har-har. That would be the front. They were trapped far, far behind enemy lines, sandwiched between the rising red Magh' adobe walls of the enemy tunnels. In excrement deep and dire.
He shrugged and turned away. So what else was new?