Rats, Bats and Vats
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- £4.49
Publisher Description
ALIENS: BEWARE OF LOW-FLYING
AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY
Chip Connolly was a conscripted grunt in trouble. Here he was, stuck behind enemy lines with a bunch of cyber-uplifted rats and bats. Rats with human speech, but with rat values. Rats that knew what was worth fighting for: sex, food and strong drink. True, they were holed up on a ruined wine-farm with enough brandy to swim in. Trouble was, there wasnt much food. And with shrew-metabolism the rats had to eat. He was next on the menu. The bats were no help: they were crazy revolutionaries planning to throw off the yoke of human enslavementwith high explosive. As if that wasnt bad enough, there was the girl theyd rescued. Rich. Beautiful. With a passionate crush on her heroic rescuer. She came with added extras: a screwball Alien tutor, and a cyber-uplifted pet galagoa tiny little lemurlike-critter with a big mouth and delusions about being the worlds greatest lover.
So: hed volunteered for a suicide mission. Of course things only got worse. The whole crew decided to come along. Seven rats, five bats, a galago, two humans, a sea-urchin-like alien and an elderly vineyard tractor without brakes . . . against several million inimical aliens. He was going to die.
Mind you, not dying could be even more terrible. That girl might get him.
At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Freer (The Forlorn) and Flint (Mother of Demons) join forces in this lighthearted SF offering set on the colony world of Harmony and Reason, which is being invaded by the dreaded, insectoid alien Magh'. Chip, a former sous-chef and "vat"--a human bred for hard labor--finds himself trapped behind enemy lines with the rats and bats of the title, genetically engineered animals designed for close-quarters combat, stealth and plenty of off-color wisecrackery. But when Virginia Shaw, a daughter of the yuppie Shareholder class, gets caught behind enemy lines with her alien tutor, and Chip and Co. rescue her, the sexual sparks start to fly. Chip and Ginny recognize that their class hatred is an obstacle to defeating the Magh'; when the two learn to cooperate, everyone soon lends a hand or paw or wing, refurbishing a rusty old farm tractor, on which animal and human careen through Magh' defenses. Although the military SF plot is peppered with its share of Dirty Dozen-esque cliffhangers, the sharpest moments in this giddy entertainment are those where the rodents blithely skewer human mores.
