by Eric Flint
Then the lights went out, just as the second Nerba lowered its head and charged the Korozhet.
What were obviously smaller emergency lights came on. A sound like a mixture between a rattle and a severe case of gas erupted from speakers.
The Nerba hadn't survived his impact with the Korozhet. But the Korozhet hadn't survived either.
"Get our kit and let's move in!"
The bats were already swooping on the hopper, snatching bat-mines. Ginny grabbed for the chainsaw first. Then clothes. The skirt she just stepped into, and she decided that the blouse buttons could wait. A girl had to dress slightly for success, even if a chainsaw was the finest in fashion accessories.
Behind her she heard a dull thump.
"Bat-mines. Too early, methinks. Let's move out, Ginny."
"Ay, senorita. Let's she roll and rock!" Fluff was back on his habitual post on her shoulder.
They headed into the unknown.
***
But they hadn't got more than five hundred yards into the ship, when the strains of "The Rifles of the BRA" overtook them. Bats flooded overhead in an almost solid stream, singing.
"I think we have air superiority," said Doc.
"If they've all been at the sauerkraut, we'll have wind superiority, too," said Melene, twitching her nose.
"Well, I think their singing needs the right instrumental accompaniment." Ginny gunned her chainsaw.
Fal took a swig from his bottle. "And get to some of these fretful porpentines, before the bats kill them all."
***
Down in the energy section, with an enemy laser gun and heavy alien bucket, Chip Connolly prepared to go down fighting. Or at least breaking things.
And then he heard it. A far-away sound. And never was bad singing so sweet.
"Charlie Connolly goes to die on the bridge o' toon today…"
If that wasn't tuneless O'Niel leading that singing, then he was Henri-Pierre's mustachioed mummy. Grinning like a madman, swinging his bucket, Chip advanced towards the noise.
"Oh I've been a wild rover for many's the year… and I've spent all me money on whiskey and beer…"
Bats swept in, in a triumphal flutter. "Connolly, you inartistic dog! You've ruined O'Niel's song by not being dead," said Bronstein, her claws digging into his shoulder.
Then, panting, Ginny ran in. The chainsaw fell to the floor, as did the bucket.
" 'Tis quick work," said Pistol. "Undressed already, and Ginny half so, you puffed and reckless libertines."
"I've got a chainsaw," said Ginny, picking it up, but keeping one hand on Chip. "No one tells a lady she is undressed while she still has her chainsaw."
"And I have a bucket. No man is undressed with a bucket." Chip brushed away Ginny's tears with a caressing hand. "I don't even have a handkerchief…" He touched his temple. "But I do have a soft-cyber implant, Ginny. They made me a slave, and I betrayed all of you. But I did manage to break their force field."
"Begorra!" said O'Niel in a fine imitation of disgust. "Why did I bother to come? No job to do, no drink, no strawberry yogurt-and me fine lyrics are purely ruin't."
"Just burning love," said Pistol. "Thank you very much."
***
Fitz, Van Klomp and the rest of his force were beginning to feel like spare parts. The bats were going through the ship like a flying tide. Even the various aliens they encountered were too busy trying to kill Korozhet to pay much attention to the newcomers.
Then it started becoming apparent that some of the Korozhet were releasing their nitrous oxide. Sheer speed and unexpectedness, particularly of the bats, had ensured that many of the Korozhet had died first. So had thousands of the slaves turning on the Korozhet-a totally unexpected thing. But, in the upper parts of the great globular ship, there were a few Korozhet who had had enough time to try and fight back. And nitrous oxide had incapacitated enough of their prey in the past.
So, now, human soldiers with gas masks from the local chemical plant finally had a job to do. Part of that job was getting the alien ex-slaves out of the ship. Now that the ship was at least partially disabled, Fitz had sent a radio op back to the entry portal calling hundreds more human soldiers in, along with medical teams. Troops without slowshields-but with shotguns-soon began proving that human buckshot was superior to harpoons.
Fitz met a recognizable alien in the upper passages. It was the blue furred one, Darleth. She'd said that she could hold her breath for up to twenty minutes, as an aquatic species. The Jampad's homeworld was apparently vastly tidal, and thus Jampad needed to be able to both swim and climb with equal facility.
Only this wasn't her. It wasn't the same blue, and it was wider.
"High-spine chamber up here." It pointed with one of its arms. "Have many lasers inside."
The gas got to it finally, and it staggered.
"Abbas. Simmons. Carry it out and get it to the medical teams."
The Jampad had known about the gas. It had made a deliberate decision to tell them about the danger ahead. Fitz had already come to trust one Jampad; he decided to trust another.
They'd worked out how to work the spiral iris doors by now. Opening it slightly, while lying on the floor, Fitz gave the occupants inside a grenade. With the hiss of laser fire coming through the door, his soldiers followed it up with two more. And then another two for luck.
***
The High-spines inside the chamber would never see another instar. The paratroopers opened the iris further, and filled the room with buckshot.
After that it was little more than mopping up.
***
Half an hour later Fitz came out of the ship. Van Klomp was already there, using his loud voice in lieu of translation skills. So far there were just car-lights lighting up the scene, but someone was stringing wire and setting up spotlights. He saw Fitz on the ramp.
"Ja, boykie. We're moving them back into town. Away from the ship, with a bat to each squad of ten as a translator." He pointed to the alien forms and oxygen tanks. "Just as soon as the medics say they're okay. You should hear the band-aid mechanics bitch about alien physiology, and trying to stop those dumb big things with the horns from going back into the ship as soon as they can stand. We thought we'd have to shoot them to stop them until one of the teams brought a bunch of cute fluffy puppy things out of the ship. You've never seen such a fuss."
He took a deep breath. "Fitzy, that blue furred fellow. The one Sergeant Abbas says you found and told you there was some sort of ambush waiting. He showed us something."
Conrad Fitzhugh was uneasy. Van Klomp did not speak quietly unless he was deadly earnest. "Tell me, Bobby."
"Ariel's body. He was told to dump it in the incinerator. He didn't. I've got it over behind the aid station."
Tears had already started in Fitz's eyes. But his voice remained steady. "Take me to it, Bobby. I need to see her. I need… to pay my last respects. I never got that chance."
Van Klomp put a large hand on Fitz's shoulder. "Better not, Fitzy. She's been badly mutilated. Her head… down to about mid-chest has been split. Yetteth, that's the Jampad-fellow, says they do that to take out the soft-cyber. We'll bury her with honor. But best you remember her as she once was."
Fitz shook his head. "No," he croaked. "I need to see her. To tell her I loved her. No matter what she looks like."
So Van Klomp took him to where he'd laid the little body. And, at Fitz's request, left him to his grief.
***
Robert Van Klomp walked back over to the ramp, and got back into organizing mode. Someone had to do it, although he noted that Ogata made an even better field officer than he did lawyer. Mike Capra came up to him. "Guess what I just carried out of that ship in an interesting state of undress?"
"What?"
"Major Tana Gainor. The stitcher, in person. She probably thought she could screw her way out of trouble with the Pricklepusses, but this time she got screwed. They've mindwiped her and put an implant into her head. We found her in solitary, in t
he ship. All the other slaves were in dormitories, but Tana Gainor was in well-sealed solitary. Maybe the Korozhet were brighter than we gave them credit for."
Van Klomp snorted. "Almost a pity that those command-phrases Liepsich said the Korozhet used don't work any more. That's a woman I'd have cheerfully used for cannon fodder."
He shook his head. "Now, I have a problem fit for your lawyerly talents. One of the sergeants has just pointed out that there are that herd of human-sheep out on Webb Fields in those Korozhet enclosures. He's been over and he says there are about fifty in one enclosure that might be dead. They're just lying about whereas there's a clamor coming from the bigger enclosures. Get yourself a squad and head over there. Check it out. Liberate them. And document the bastards. Take names. We know some people were cooperating with these Pricklepusses. I want to know who they were when this is all over."
***
Someone tapped Fitz tentatively on the shoulder, as he sat on the ground next to the small body resting on Van Klomp's bush jacket.
"Excuse me, Major," said the medic respectfully. "I don't want to bother you, but we've got a woman who has just come round in the aid-station. She seems a bit confused. She's insisting on seeing you. She… Ah, well, she threatened to bite us if we didn't get you immediately. It might just be something urgent, sir."
Wordlessly, Fitz covered the small body with his own jacket, and got up to follow the medic. Dawn was beginning to break over George Bernard Shaw City, and already the scene was assuming some kind of normality. Vehicles were coming and going. The aid station now seemed full of humans rather than aliens. Fitz recognized one of the women on a stretcher as General Cartup-Kreutzler's blond and buxom former secretary, Daisy. She stared upward with vacant eyes. He was damned sure she hadn't been part of the assault. "What happened here?" he asked the medic.
"Dunno, sir. They're from the compound on Webb Fields. There are forty-three of them. Physiologically there's nothing we can find wrong. But they're not really responding to stimulus, except in the most basic way."
"In Daisy's case," said Fitz sardonically, "that's just about situation normal. Still, even for her, this is extreme. What are you doing with them?"
"Just stabilizing them. Cleaning them, keeping them warm. They've no more sense than a newborn. Less, if anything. The woman who wanted you is in this ambulance."
Fitz ducked his head and looked in. "Fitzy!" said the woman lying there, sitting up and shedding the sheet that had covered her nudity.
"Major Gainor." Fitz's smile had no humor it in at all. "Talk about the original bad penny. Are you in that much of a hurry to resume prosecuting me? You worthless bitch."
She blinked at him. "Doth not love me any more?" she said tragically.
Fitz frowned. "What the hell are you talk-"
Suddenly, from nowhere, an old line of poetry came to him. From something by Keats, if he remembered right.
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific-and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
His eyes flashed to Major Gainor's head. The hair had been shaved away from part of it. There was a small, fresh scar on the scalp.
And Ariel's head had been split open, to remove her soft-cyber implant.
" 'Twas not that I meant to persecute you," insisted the woman on the bed. "Well. Except for the chocolate. If you loved me, you would give me more dark chocolate Cointreau straws."
"Ariel?" he croaked.
The implant-scarred head nodded. " 'Tis an ugly tailless body, true. 'Twill take some getting used to, especially these dullard teeth. But 'tis now mine own, Fitz."
***
The aid center had seen a lot of strange sights since they'd set up shop at about two that morning.
Aliens of various sizes and shapes.
Bats full of laughing gas and Irish song.
A large rat weeping over his golf cart's scratched paintwork.
A pair of blue-furred creatures having a "who-can-jump-highest" competition while making ear-shattering hooting noises.
But they all agreed afterward that the sight of Major Conrad Fitzhugh swinging a naked woman around in his arms until they both fell down together too dizzy to stand, too happy to care, laughing and crying, was perhaps the oddest.
"Kinky, you ask me," muttered one of the medics. "She's the one who was prosecuting him, you know. The guy's a freaking masochist."
Eric Flint
The Rats, the Bats amp; the Ugly
Epilogue
Endings in books are neat. Endings in real life tend to be more ragged and indeterminate. Nonetheless, this was an ending of sorts. Gradually, within a few days, a semblance of order had been reestablished in GBS City. Van Klomp found he had to impose most of it. Still… he had the voice for it.
By the end of the week there was even power in several parts of the city.
Dr. Wei had a Korozhet prisoner to study; though, first, he had to get the Super-Glue off.
The remnant of the army high command that still had its mind was back in Military Headquarters, spending its time constructively trying to think up excuses for its former behavior-which the charitable were calling "utter incompetence" and a distressingly large number of people were calling "treason"-and thus not interfering with actual military affairs.
Virginia and Chip had stopped making love long enough to be abused by Liepsich for causing such damage in the Korozhets' former ship, which the scientist seemed to regard as his personal new toy. And conspire… well, argue with the bats.
A certain candy-striped vehicle had been resprayed and given the freedom of a grateful city. Within the week, every other motorist on the streets was deeply regretting that spontaneous gesture.
And…
***
Ogata took himself out to see Conrad Fitzhugh, whom no one had gotten around to returning to court or pre-trial confinement yet. Fitz and Ariel were staying-at Virginia Shaw's insistence-at Shaw House. The place was something of a menagerie these days. The doors were being repaired and replaced and one wing was becoming a bank.
Fortunately, the bats didn't mind flying in windows.
"And how is Ariel fitting into her new residence?" asked Ogata with a smile.
"She's making a lot of changes. Fortunately, she disapproves of mauve lipstick. Any kind of lipstick, in fact. She finds walking without even a vestige of a tail awkward. She made a bonfire out of all of Gainor's high-heeled shoes. And she complains at least once an hour about her useless teeth. Or do you mean where we're living?"
"It seems a good answer to both questions," said Ogata. "You do realize that, despite the Korozhet having put Ariel's soft-cyber chip into Tana's mindwiped brain so that they could question her, as far as the Army is concerned you are now cohabiting-I assume lewdly, yes?-"
Fitz grinned. The grin, on that scarred face, looked as serene and self-satisfied as a shark's. "She's still a rat, sir. In almost everything that matters, anyway. A rat's idea of slow seduction is waiting until she finishes her chocolates. And, as it happens, Ariel wasn't in a slow mood." He cleared his throat. "Neither was I."
Ogata rolled his eyes. "Yes, well. What I thought. So you are now living in sin with the person who is supposed to be prosecuting you. This is, to put it mildly, a conflict of interest. As far as the army is concerned, Ariel is still Major Tana Gainor, and she's AWOL."
"That's the least of your problems," said Fitz. "You're a lawyer, Colonel Ogata. Until it's changed-and even then it won't apply retroactively-the law on Harmony and Reason considers the woman's body that of Tana Moira Gainor. So long as the mind is sound, which this one sure as hell is, and never mind who it belongs to. Legally speaking, Mike Capra tells me, that last is a mystical and meaningless abstraction."
Ogata looked a little taken aback. "That would surely depend on the definition of 'sound.' "
"That might be true. But having acquired a perfectly usable
but large and empty mind the person that is Ariel is expanding her Ratshipness into it all. She was a bright rat and Gainor was a smart woman. The combination has made Ariel intimidatingly intelligent. I pity anyone who tries to prove in court that there's anything 'unsound' about her mind. Trust me on this one."
"But her personality… uh, that is…" Ogata, unusually, seemed to be groping for words.
Fitz shrugged. "From what I can see, it's all Ariel. I admit, it's a bit hard to tell sometimes. Tana Gainor was a predatory person and, well, in a lot of ways that describes Ariel to a T. The rats are predators, technically speaking, since their personalities are based mainly on shrew genetic stock. On the other hand, Ariel's as loyal as they come, which God knows Gainor wasn't. She even told me she's willing-though I'd have to make it up to her with plenty of chocolates-to abandon sensible ratly promiscuity for this silly human 'faithful' business."
Fitz's grin seemed fixed in place. "Have you any idea of just how rich Tana Gainor was, Colonel Ogata? Ariel was down at the bank finding out, the day after she 'woke up.' Trust a rat to check her loot first. Ill-gotten gains, most of it, I don't doubt for a minute. But there's no proof of that, and-legally, legally-it all now belongs to Ariel."
Ogata's skin color made it difficult for him to turn pale. But he did a pretty fair imitation. "Oh, no," he groaned.
"Oh, yes," countered Fitz. "Have you any idea what the ex-2IC of the Ratafia is planning on doing with all that money? I did get her to swear that she'd wouldn't actually break any laws, although I'm sure she'll interpret that promise with a ratly twist. The bats might be altruistic with Virginia's fortune… but I promise my Ariel is not, with her own."
***
