Chip had once tried to tell an officer—a Shareholder, naturally—why the thing was effing useless compared to his own. In typical officer fashion the jerk had told him to shut up, and demanded to know where his regulation trench knife was. After all, what could a veteran grunt know about fighting Maggots? Much less than some still-wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant, of course.
Still, the bangsticks worked. When you pushed them into the right bit of Maggot, that is. He really wouldn’t have minded having his. It must be buried back there somewhere. . . .
He tried again. “Anyone got a light?”
Nobody replied from the darkness. But at least there were no Maggot scritch-scritch noises either.
“Who else is in here?” he asked, daring to speak slightly louder. He strained to hear one particular voice, hoping . . .
He’d seen the wall come down on Dermott. The slowshield would have protected her from the debris, but had she managed to get out before the roof came down?
“I’ faith. I am, and so is someone who is lying on me.”
“Sorry . . . Doll? Is that you?” It was the same rat voice which had been bemoaning its missing pack.
“Yes ’tis I, you fat swasher. I should have known by the familiar weight that it was you, Fal.”
Chip cleared his throat, trying to clear away the constricting fear. “Let’s have a roll call, guys.”
“Piss off. Who do you think you are?” said another male-rat voice. Chip could tell, even in the dark. The male rats always had their vocal synthesizers adjusted to a low pitch, in the attempt to sound like real he-rats.
“I’m Connolly, rat. I’m a human, see. That means you take my orders.”
“You’ve got more chance of falling pregnant, Connolly,” groused the same voice. “You’re not a whoreson officer, you’re just a vatbrat.”
Chip ground his teeth. There hadn’t been a human reply yet. “Rat, I will pull your tail off, and then shove it down your throat until it comes out of your ass, if you give me any more lip. Now, who else is in here?”
There came a chorus of voices:
“BombardierBat Siobhan Illich-Hill.”
“BombardierBat Longfang O’Niel.”
“BombardierBat Cuchulain Behan.”
As always, Chip thought the sound of an Irish accent coming out of their voice synthesizers was ludicrous, but the bats insisted on it.
“It is delusions of grandeur I think the human has,” said another bat-Irish voice, leaden with resentment.
“Do you now, Eamon? Well, I think it is you who have the delusions. This is Senior BombardierBat Michaela Bronstein, Connolly.”
Chip was relieved to hear Bronstein’s voice. In some ways, he thought Michaela was even crazier than the other bats, but at least he’d always been able to get along with her.
“And, seeing as you want to know, I’m Melene, gorgeous.” A rat-girl voice.
“Phylla. You flung me here.” That rat-girl didn’t sound too charmed about it. But Phylla was usually in a foul mood.
“Doll Tearsheet—at your service.”
“Not right now, Doll.” Fat Falstaff sounded more cheerful already.
“Shut up, Fal. I know you’re here. Anybody else?” Chip hoped for a human voice . . .
“Nym.”
“Pistol.”
“Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.”
Despite the name, that was a rat too. “Doc,” as everybody else called him, was the platoon’s medic.
Rats. Rats and bats. Chip felt for his torch again. Maybe he could see her. Then a bat voice said, “Try the other side of you, indade.”
The bat-Irish idiom, as always, grated on Chip’s nerves. “Why can’t you just say ‘indeed,’ dammit?” he muttered, as he began feeling around. “Stupid friggin’ affectation . . .”
The voice, still as heavily accented as ever, clarified the location: “About a foot from your knee.”
He felt there. Encountered the hard roundness of his torch. Felt for the switch. On. There was no light, but he’d done enough globe changes in total darkness to manage to fix that, a lot faster than soldiers had once been able to fieldstrip their rifles. The light stabbed out through the hanging dust.
No Maggots. In the narrow uncaved-in section of what had been their bunker, a handful of rats and a cluster of bats pressed against the sandbag-wall. There were no other human survivors with them. Already one plump rat was scrabbling aside pieces of debris.