Rats, Bats & Vats

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 wasn’t 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 enslavement—with high explosive. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there was the girl they’d 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 galago—a tiny little lemurlike-critter with a big mouth and delusions about being the world’s greatest lover.

     So: he’d 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.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dave Freer, author of The Forlorn (Baen) and of many articles in scientific journals, is an expert on sharks, an accomplished rock-climber, a wine-taster, and was an unwilling conscript in the “undeclared” South African-Angolan war. He lives in Natal, South Africa with his wife, two sons, and four dogs.

Eric Flint is a gifted new star of military and alternate history SF. His first novel for Baen, Mother of Demons, was picked by Science Fiction Chronicle as a best novel of the year. His latest solo work is 1632, a major novel of time-travel adventure. With David Drake he has collaborated on four novels in the acclaimed “Belisarius” series, the latest being Fortune’s Stroke. A longtime labor union activist with a degree (Phi Beta Kappa) in African history, he currently resides in northwest Indiana with his wife Lucille.

Cover art by Bob Eggleton

Hardcover
Paperback

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

First printing, September 2000

Distributed by Simon & Schuster
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New York, NY 10020

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 0-671-31940-X

Copyright © 2000 by David Freer & Eric Flint

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original
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