beams danced in the dusty air, as more and more of the invaders piled in.
The Maggot arrowscorp nearly got him. Chip rolled frantically, barely getting
clear, thrusting his blade out sideways. The stupid scorp slid straight onto
the Solingen steel. It wasn't standard issue, that knife. It was a real
twenty-first-century chef's knife from Old Earth, which Chip had stolen from
his employer's kitchen the day before he had reported to boot camp.
Good thing he had, too. The official crap the soldiers were issued wouldn't
even have penetrated. The colony's steel plant would have been at home in
1870. With a standard-issue blade he'd have been dead already. Instead, Chip
was able to enjoy the experience of having an arrowscorp slowly pressing down
onto him, snapping its jaws eight inches from his face, about to kill him in,
oh, maybe ten seconds or so.
The spine-tail streaked forward, barely missing his twisting shoulder with its
venomous barb. Chip managed to grab it, just behind the stinger, and cling to
the slippery, leathery pseudo-chitin. Corrosive venom dripped, inches from his
arm. The Solingen steel slid slowly through some more Maggot, then stopped
against a joint ridge-thickening. The Maggot's ichor dribbled off his wrist
and into the dust as the creature pressed down onto him.
The back-edged jaws were only inches off his face now. The creature writhed,
jaws snapping air just in front of him. Chip couldn't let go, and he couldn't
win. In the clatter-clatter and effort-grunts of hand, claw and tooth combat,
somebody screamed in a terrible, tearing agony. A scorp sting had obviously
gone home.
"Help me!" another shrill voice shrieked above the tumult.
It sounded like a rat. Hell and buggery! He couldn't even help himself! Sweat
was lubricating the hand that clung to the scorp's tail. Any moment now and
he'd be screaming too . . .
Suddenly, his headlight silhouetted a batwing flutter, then highlighted a
clash of inch-long white-white fangs in an evil, black squashed-pigsnout face.
The scorp went limp, its ganglion-ladder severed.
Chip shoved it away, gasping. "Thanks, Michaela!"
"Moronic, useless, be-damned Primate!" Michaela Bronstein fluttered off,
dodging other reaching and snapping claws with ease.
"Get it offa me!" groaned a smothered voice from the dusty darkness. Chip's
searching headlight showed a long tail protruding from under a St. Bernard-
sized armored burrower. The stocky soldier heaved the dead Maggot aside by the
telson. A long-snouted plump rat-shape, as big as a small siamese cat,
scrambled hastily out from under, with its red-tipped fangs exposed in a
wicked, lean-jawed grin.
The rat leaped at Chip's throat, moving in a twisting maelstrom of teeth and
raking claws. Sudden shreds flew . . . from the joint of the saw-edged
pedipalp that had been about to take Chip's head off. The rat had disabled one
claw, but the other claw would soon snap the rat. Chip's Solingen steel proved
its quality again, slicing an exact "X" into the double ventral ganglion knot
of the attacking Maggot. A quick, neat, precise job, like carving tomato
roses.
"Shee . . . yit! That was nearly my head," panted Chip. He and the rat both
scrambled clear of the falling Maggot.
Long insectivore teeth gleamed. "You owe me a beer, Connolly. Make it two.
I've got a nice bit of tail I'd like to share it with."
"Bullshit! You owe me, Fal -- "
The air boomed and fragments ricocheted off Chip's slowshield. Great! thought
Chip, with relief. One of the bat-bombardiers must have blown the Maggot
access tunnel. Now at least they only had to deal with what was already inside
the bunker. Chip stumbled over something in the dust and darkness. Fell.
Landed hard.
"Get your sorry whoreson ass offa my tail," chittered a feminine voice in the