Hell’s teeth, Chip thought gloomily. That had been a foretaste of the army if there ever was one. “Do you rats know how to do that?” he asked.
“O’ course,” said Nym. “Part of basic training. Buggered if I know why.”
Pistol nodded. “Yeah. Like most of the rest of boot camp. Dafter than bat-logic.”
“Be watching your tongue, rat!” snapped Eamon. The big bat bared his fangs for an instant. Then, his temper easing: “Not that I can’t but agree with you about the craziness of that institution called ‘boot camp.’ But don’t call it bat-logic. ‘Tis an affront to our intelligence.”
“What are you going to use to abseil down?” Privately Chip agreed with them about boot camp. In this army the surest ticket out of active service was to be an instructor, and the best way to be sure you stayed one of those was to be a brainless sadistic asshole. That was what the Powers-That-Be, who didn’t know combat from a hole in the ground, expected of an instructor. Discipline! That was the thing. But if they got onto the subject they’d be here all night. Best to move along, even if he’d like to ask if they’d also had to brush the hairs on their blankets. It was vital to military skill that the left-hand side of the blanket’s hairs faced left, and the right-hand ones right. How could one defeat the enemy otherwise? And starching and ironing of the corners of the bed to knife-edge creases was of course essential. That meant you quickly learned to sleep under your bed, rolled in a spare blanket, which made sleeping in the mud in the trenches quite homelike.
“There’s a big spool of braided nylon back at the workshop,” said Nym. “Methinks it wouldn’t support you, Chip, but it’ll be fine for us. There is nylon webbing the farmers must have used for tying down loads. We can make harnesses out of that. There is plenty of chain. We can contrive harness links and descendures out of that. Piece of cake. Now, tell me, did they also make you humans do all that stupid marching stuff?”
“Yep. And you?” Chip couldn’t imagine rats marching while some company drill sergeant bellowed.
Fal laughed. “Hah. Tell you about it as we go back. The drill sergeant’s father was a bachelor. We used to have to march with our tails straight. Do you know what that does to your balance?”
It was Eamon’s turn to laugh. “Hah! Soft you had it, indade. We use to have to march too. Sheer insanity! ‘Swing those wings!’ I can hear still the loudmouth shouting it.”
“I believe both the logic behind it, and the methods used, to be ridiculously archaic. Rooted in formation combat. In terms of phenomenology, a classic confusion between self-certainty and Reason.”
Doc, as usual, silenced them all for a while.
Then Bronstein continued. “To be sure, ’tis a system which is all well and good for incompetent fighters, like most of your species, Chip. It makes mediocre fighters of the bad. But to try and teach hunting creatures like us to fight like clockwork-men, is a sure waste of talent. It assumes the enemy will fight like clockwork too.”
O’Niel snorted. “And that’s like these foine ‘battle plans.’ They nivver survive a moment’s real battle. And why for should hand-to-hand combat be any different?”
“Oh, but we cannot make as many holes in an enemy’s battle as in a woman’s petticoat. That would take intelligence.” Sarcasm was definitely Phylla’s strong point.
“Military intelligence?” demanded Chip. “Don’t make me laugh!” There was the conscript’s love of the army in his voice.
Phylla laughed. “Ha ha. The fool who taught us to abseil made one intelligent statement.”
Chip’s curiosity was aroused. “And what was that?”
“He promised us we would hate him. And we did. I believe he lived.”
“Hey, Chip! Remember you said you charged for giving a rat a lift?” prompted Melene.
“Yeah.”
“Well, would you take payment in kind? My feet are killing me,” said the rat-girl.
Pistol whistled. “Woo-hoo! You got a roll of sticky tape, Chip?”
“You rats are really disgusting,” said Siobhan, and fluttered off, before she had to listen to more.