“Help me!” another shrill voice shrieked above the tumult.
It sounded like a rat. Hell and buggery! He couldn’t even help himself! Sweat was lubricating the hand that clung to the scorp’s tail. Any moment now and he’d be screaming too . . .
Suddenly, his headlight silhouetted a batwing flutter, then highlighted a clash of inch-long white-white fangs in an evil, black squashed-pigsnout face.
The scorp went limp, its ganglion-ladder severed.
Chip shoved it away, gasping. “Thanks, Michaela!”
“Moronic, useless, be-damned Primate!” Michaela Bronstein fluttered off, dodging other reaching and snapping claws with ease.
“Get it offa me!” groaned a smothered voice from the dusty darkness. Chip’s searching headlight showed a long tail protruding from under a St. Bernard-sized armored burrower. The stocky soldier heaved the dead Maggot aside by the telson. A long-snouted plump rat-shape, as big as a small siamese cat, scrambled hastily out from under, with its red-tipped fangs exposed in a wicked, lean-jawed grin.
The rat leaped at Chip’s throat, moving in a twisting maelstrom of teeth and raking claws. Sudden shreds flew . . . from the joint of the saw-edged pedipalp that had been about to take Chip’s head off. The rat had disabled one claw, but the other claw would soon snap the rat. Chip’s Solingen steel proved its quality again, slicing an exact “X” into the double ventral ganglion knot of the attacking Maggot. A quick, neat, precise job, like carving tomato roses.
“Shee . . . yit! That was nearly my head,” panted Chip. He and the rat both scrambled clear of the falling Maggot.
Long insectivore teeth gleamed. “You owe me a beer, Connolly. Make it two. I’ve got a nice bit of tail I’d like to share it with.”
“Bullshit! You owe me, Fal—”
The air boomed and fragments ricocheted off Chip’s slowshield. Great! thought Chip, with relief. One of the bat-bombardiers must have blown the Maggot access tunnel. Now at least they only had to deal with what was already inside the bunker. Chip stumbled over something in the dust and darkness. Fell. Landed hard.
“Get your sorry whoreson ass offa my tail,” chittered a feminine voice in the darkness. “You useless effing bread-chipper!” Chip scrambled to his feet. He’d rather fight Maggots than Phylla. That was one mean rat-girl!
Then, with a slow creaking groan, the main roofbeam fell in. Either the demolition charge or the Maggot tunnel must have undermined its support. Earth and roofing material descended, in a tons-heavy avalanche. Chip grabbed the rat-girl and dived for the far wall.
* * *
In the creaking darkness a rat voice griped, “Malmsey-nosed whoremasters. My pack is somewhere under that lot.”
The air was so full of dust, you could shovel the stuff. Chip coughed and felt about for his dislodged headlight. Rats and bats could manage in the total darkness. The bats had their sonar and the rats—built from a mix of elephant shrew, shrew and rat genes—could just about read by scent, and had keen hearing to boot. Humans still needed implanted infrared lenses and headlights. Maggots might have keen hearing, feelers and scent sensors, but were plainly blind to infrared. It was one small advantage.
“Anyone got a headlight there?” Chip asked softly. A Maggot could nail him so fast now. He still had his knife . . . but it was no use poking blindly at Maggots. He knew he had to cut precisely, and that he’d only have one chance. He wouldn’t have said “no thanks” to his standard issue bangstick, an assegai with a cartridge set into the blade. It wasn’t a great weapon, but it allowed some margin of error. It was a lot better than the rest of the issue crap: a stupid little ice axe thing and a trench knife you couldn’t slice baloney with.
The slowship which had settled the planet of Harmony And Reason had taken the colonists out of the network of industries which twenty-second century technology needed to support its complexity. So, except for the clone units on the ship, the colonists were back at self-sustaining tech levels. From the manufacturing point of view, that meant nineteenth to early twentieth century. Which meant no mono-molecular edged knives.