Fitz didn't turn a hair. "Hmm. I trust you will continue to do so. And what else do they fancy?"

The sergeant was getting to like his new lieutenant. "Well, drink's best, sir," he said with a grin, "but you'll find lads like Ewen run a good black market in chocolate, lighters, knickknacks, fancy goods. They find tails the s.e.xiest part of the body so they like to ornament them."

"And where do they get the money for all this?" asked Fitz. "I was under the impression they weren't paid."

"Ah," said the sergeant, giving him the sort of look a proud teacher might give a star pupil. "There you have it, sir. The rats' chief vice is looting. If the Maggots had loot, we wouldn't be able to hold them back."

The rats were lounging in the OP, discussing the curious behavior of the humans. "Methinks he is popular enough with them. They clapped."

"You mean he is p.r.o.nging yon Linda. Methinks I have heard of that. They call it Vat-s.h.a.gging," said Gobbo, knowledgeably.

Ariel stared at him in puzzlement. "Art mad? What sayest thou?"

"Well, he hath got the clap," said Gobbo. "Ewen said he was sure he had it from her."

"Not that sort of clap. The clapping you get for being popular."

"'Twas my thought you could not be my kind without being popular," said Gobbo earnestly. His ears twitched. "Hist. He comes."

The rats were earnestly doing what they were supposed to when Fitz arrived. None of them leapt to attention. "As you were," said Fitz, dryly.

They went back to their lounging, which hadn't been quite what he'd meant. That was what the sergeant had meant by "take things very literally." Well, he could work against them, or work with them. . . .

He sat down, and hauled out Van Klomp's parting gift. A hip flask full of HAR's best yet attempt at a single malt. It was a reasonable exchange for the gift of an Aston Martin replica. "Does anyone here want a drink?"

One rat-smaller, therefore a female, at a guess-with a rakish tilt to her tail and a particularly rich chocolate color to her fur, was quickest. She s.n.a.t.c.hed the hip flask and leapt to a niche in the wall while the others were still gaping. "'Tis mine!" she squealed triumphantly.

"'Tis not right, Ariel. That's not what the wh.o.r.eson said!" protested another of the rats.

Fitz saw that a mighty fight was brewing. So he neatly snagged the hip flask back. It came with a clutching rat. "All of us." He stared at the rat who was still clinging to the hip flask, but whose teeth were now bared viciously. "And I will personally bite the tail right off any rat who tries to hog it all. Which would be a shame as yours is one of the s.e.xiest I've ever seen."

To the sound of ratty chuckles and a couple of very credible wolf whistles, she let go. And winked salaciously at him. Then she sniffed. "You've got chocolate," she said, suddenly fiercely intent.

"Indeed. And we'll discuss my parting with some in a few minutes."

A pompous-looking rat strutted forward, a cup made out of a bangstick cartridge outstretched. He motioned at the hip flask. "For a suitable insult, I, as Minister for Interior Affairs, will tell you her weaknesses. Although, as Minister for Defense and Lord High Archbishop, I will say Ariel's tail is not without risks."

Ariel, remaining perfectly confidently standing on Fitz's knee, her eye fixed on his breast pocket, said, "Shut up, Pooh-Bah."

He'd placed the names now. Ariel-the sprite in Shakespeare's Tempest. Pooh-Bah from The Mikado. The names were an affectation he'd heard about. A side effect of the language download into their Korozhet-built soft-cyber units. As the soft-cyber unit selected the nearest approximate meaning to what the user meant, the name would probably reflect the nature of the beast. "Let's start with names."

"Bardolph." "Gobbo." "Pitti-Sing." "Trinculo." "Caliban." "Poo-Bah-for a reasonable fee." "Hymen." That one arched her tail provocatively at him.

"Paws off, bawd. I found him first," said Ariel.

No heroes. No kings. Rogues and lechers, in their own self-image, by the sounds of it. Well, he'd have to work with the clay he had.

"Get some mugs." He gestured with the hip flask. There was a scamper and a scattering. Except for Ariel. She merely unscrewed the silver cup off his flask, and grinned rattily at him. "Methinks I'll stay put, 'til I have that chocolate."

He shrugged. "I'll drink out of the flask."

"I should have thought of offering to do that," she said, as he doled out liquor.

"You snooze, you lose," he said cheerfully. "Now, to business. I've decided to pay a bounty on Maggot chelicerae. For every left chelicerae you have for me after the next a.s.sault, I'll pay one HAR cent-multiplied by the number of live troops I have under my command. At the moment I have some two hundred rats and sixty men, four NCOs and myself. Work that out in booze or bars of chocolate."

The rats began frantically counting on paws and toes and tails. After a while Ariel said. "'Tis no use. Help us with the mathematics. Our base eleven doth make calculation much labor."

"How many Maggots can you kill in one a.s.sault?"

The rats blinked at him. "As many as is needful. As many as doth threaten us. Sometimes there are too many," said Ariel. "Then we run away."

"Call it ten each. At that rate-if everyone survives, you rats will get $26.50 each. Of course it gets less if anyone dies."

"Methinks I have found more looting in a lieutenant's pocket," said Trinculo.

"Ah." Fitz was unsurprised by the admission. "But then he's dead, and there is no more. And that's one lieutenant among two hundred. Your chances are not good. This way . . . you're onto a sure thing. Of course I'll have to put a ceiling on it, or I'll go broke. Say $50 a month. That's what the army gives conscripted privates."

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 bra.s.sieres. 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 a.s.sault. Now Fitz understood why. And he also knew that if it wasn't for his pocket a.s.sa.s.sin-c.u.m-bodyguard, he'd have been dead five times over in that a.s.sault. Rats were everywhere. Blur-fast lethal killers with a terrifyingly casual att.i.tude 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."

"h.e.l.l'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 d.a.m.ned 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. h.e.l.l, 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.

The answer was: not well. The rats were there . . . but several of them were sitting down, leaving the fight to the human troops. And those that were still fighting were going to die. It was not that the Magh' were overwhelming. It was just that the rats seemed to be behaving like clockwork toys . . . in need of rewinding. "What's wrong?" yelled Fitz to Ariel as he ran forward to the fray.

"Methinks they're faint with hunger."

Of course! He'd been told the elephant-shrew genes gave the rats phenomenal appet.i.tes. They must have fast metabolisms and little stamina. "Feed the rats! Give them any food you've got, especially sugar, or we're dead!"

He hauled out the tin of sucking candy and flung it at a sergeant, before running into the fight. "Get someone across the west side and tell them," he yelled, bangstick stabbing through pseudochitin.

He had no idea how fast the rats would recover. He was relieved to discover that it was really quick, and that the average grunt, when faced with death or parting with precious little luxuries he kept next to his skin, would reluctantly part with the luxuries. The east side trenches of the late Lieutenant Zuma soon would be free of Magh'.

As he set off across to the west side, he was met by a panting private. "Sir. Colonel Brown on the line. He's insisting we retreat."

Fitz stopped. "Did you give him your name, Private?"

"I couldn't get a f.u.c.king word in edgeways, sir. Sorry, pardon language, sir."

"This is a war, not a kindergarten, Private. A pity Private Johnstone was killed before he could give me the message. He is dead, isn't he?"

The private grinned. "Yes, sir. I saw him die. Poor fellow."

"Stick to that story," said Fitz. "And see that the field telephone has a convincing accident. Cave part of the bunker in. The fight's all over on the east side. If we can lick them on the west, I'm not running."

Ten minutes later Fitz called in from the west side's field telephone. "Yes, sir. My apologies, sir. I was called away from our field telephone to deal with an immediate crisis. Unfortunately the instrument was destroyed and the man I had instructed to remain with it was killed."

He waited for the volcano to subside and then answered the last question.

"Where am I calling from, sir? Why Section B3, sir. On our west side. We've already secured the east side. We'd like some relief, Colonel. We're pretty thin spread holding three pieces of the line."

There was a long silence from the other side. Then: "You're making your fellow officers look bad, Lieutenant. Hum. I'll get some men up to you at once. They're waiting in trench line two."

7.

In the seven weeks that followed, Fitz's section survived a sequence of small probes and one more direct a.s.sault. This was somewhat worse than the first one. But Fitz's new system of buddying two rats to each human soldier worked remarkably well. The rest of the rats he used as a free-range strike force. And this attack seemed almost like a spearpoint aimed at his piece of the line. Once they'd stopped it, they didn't even have to deal with the other sections. And then even artillery bombardment slacked off.

They eventually had to retreat after three weeks of near idleness and weapons drill, because the line had folded to the west of them. "It's almost as if they won't hit here, because we're strongest here," grumbled Fitz. He never thought he'd miss Magh' attacks, but the boredom made keeping the troops in readiness h.e.l.l. There was drunkenness, gambling, and several fights about women . . . and fights about men among the women. Only the rats seemed content.

Sergeant Ellis nodded. "It's always like that, sir. The Maggots always attack where we're weakest."

"Suggests good intelligence, doesn't it, Sarge?"

"Can't be military intelligence then, sir," said the sergeant, handing him a couple of sealed dispatches.

Fitz cracked the first open. "Well, glory be! This'll cheer the troops up. We've done our two-month frontline stint and we're being pulled back to third line for a month to rest the men."

"Be about the fullest company to get rested," said the sergeant. "Half the time the companies have to be replaced and re-formed before that. The lads'll see some leave, too. You get a week when you're on third trench," she said with relish.

"That'll be a shock to civvy street," said Fitz dryly. Life expectancy in the trenches was about forty days at the moment. Inside, he was deeply grateful that he would be returning some eighty-three percent of his men past that. It was something you didn't dwell on here. But it did make boredom sweet. He opened the second envelope. Blinked. "It appears this bunch of ne'er-do-wells is due to attend a medals parade at sector headquarters. And yours truly is promoted to lieutenant first cla.s.s. With the corresponding increase in pay of seven dollars a day, and family and retirement benefits."

"The family and retirement benefits sound good, sir," said the sergeant. She'd given up trying to get into Fitz's pants a while back. Ariel was a good dog-in-the-manger. But the sergeant still cast sheep's eyes his way sometimes. Fitz avoided them with care. That was a set of complications he didn't need here, as their CO. Still, as a normal male there were certain intentions he was planning to follow up on that seven-day pa.s.s, when he didn't have a minder.

In dress BDUs that now had a row of ribbons on the chest, and a second pip on their shoulders, Fitz blinked at the bright lights outside the troop disembarkation station. He put his bag down and wondered just where to go now.

"To find some food and drink," said the bag, in Ariel's voice, obviously guessing his thoughts.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing in there?" he demanded.

"Methinks I am crossing my legs and tying a knot in my tail. Hurry up and let me out before I pee on your kit."

Given the alternative, letting her out seemed the only option. And, tempting though it might be, he couldn't just run off and leave her there. She had kept him alive in the trenches, after all. So, with a curious rat peering out of his magazine pocket, he took a taxi into town. It was at her orders he stopped at the Paradise p.u.s.s.y Club, too. It had a flashing neon c.o.c.ktail-gla.s.s sign.

The bouncer eyed the man in uniform uncertainly. While officers in full-dress uniform, complete with ceremonial swords, were regular and welcome visitors to the club, men in BDUs were not. However this was definitely an officer, even if he was wearing dress BDUs. Against his better judgement he'd let him in.