Ariel tapped the side of the hip flask suggestively. “I’m in. Now this rotgut sack you have in here: ’tis remarkable easy to drink compared to issue grog, even if it doesn’t have a proper bite to it. How about another, then?”
“Well, for those who are in, naturally,” said Fitz, innocently. He could afford $10,000 a month for a private army, he thought as he poured. Candy’s apartment had cost him about that—and he wasn’t having to pay for that anymore. He’d cancelled the lease.
Ariel drank the whiskey slowly, speculatively, unlike most of the rats who were into chug-and-splutter. “Methinks I shall nursemaid this one,” she announced. “For if he dies, we get naught.” She looked curiously at him. “Besides, I want to inspect his naked weapon and see if he’s adequate for a girl like me.” She wrinkled her whiskers and revealed that the stories of his exploits had reached the rats. “This ‘woman’s underwear.’ Explain?”
Fitz was still blushing at the idea that a rat might consider his wedding tackle too small. Or interesting. The sergeant had been right about no morals . . . or inhibitions! “Ah. Underclothes. Um. Panties and brassieres. Suspender belts.”
“Doth speak riddles. Small pants? Things for grilling meat?”
“Women . . . um, men too, wear a second pair of pants under their clothes. To cover their private parts.”
The rats would obviously have found astrophysics more comprehensible.
* * *
Fitz discovered that Ariel took “nursemaid” to mean she was going to take up residence in his magazine pouch, or on his shoulder. But the day wasn’t out before he discovered that this casual invasion of his privacy was worthwhile.
The nightmare creatures struck just at dusk. None of the pictures or lectures had prepared Fitz for the reality. Or for the speed and ferocity of it all. They’d said at OCS that up to seventy percent of human soldiers never survived the first major assault. Now Fitz understood why. And he also knew that if it wasn’t for his pocket assassin-cum-bodyguard, he’d have been dead five times over in that assault. Rats were everywhere. Blur-fast lethal killers with a terrifyingly casual attitude to their killing. And Fitz discovered that “ten each” was a gross underestimate of their potential and the Magh’s sheer numbers.
“Sector headquarters on the blower, Lieutenant.”
“Hell’s teeth. Have you told them we’re under attack?!”
“They know, Lieutenant. The line on either side of us folded. They’re sending reinforcements into those trenches, hoping to hold line two. They thought we—being in the center of the attack—must all be dead. They want us to retreat.”
“Tell ’em we’re still holding. We don’t want to be outflanked though.” Fitz turned to one of the NCOs. “What are our losses like, Corporal?”
The man was grinning like a dervish, despite the blood soaking his shirt from a gash on his chest. “Slight, sir. Five men I know of. Some wounded, but there are no more Maggots coming over. We’re fighting them coming along the trenches from the sectors next door now.”
“Are we going to hold them, Corporal?”
The man nodded. “The rats have gone kill-crazy, Lieutenant. I’ve never seen anything like it. The Maggots usually send a lot of ‘scorps. This is all light, fast stuff. Easy to kill. Those damned rats would have killed twice as many if they didn’t stop to take a claw off each one. Some kind of new rat-craze.”
“Tell ’em. Hell, no. I’d better tell them.” Fitz ran for the field-telephone bunker.
“Lieutenant Fitzhugh here.”
“Captain Dewalt here. Colonel’s orders. Sound a retreat for any survivors, Lieutenant,” said the voice on the other end.
“We’ve held them off, sir. And there are no more Magh’ coming. We’re mopping up.”
His words didn’t appear to have registered with the Captain. “We’ll have stretcher teams in the second trench line. Leave the rats . . .”
“We’ve held them off, sir,” repeated Fitz, louder now. “No need to retreat.”
There was a stunned silence. “What! That’s ridiculous. . . . I’d better confer with the colonel. Stay near the field telephone.”
Fitz didn’t. Instead he left—at a run—to see how the fight with the Magh’ from the next-door sector was doing.