Eric Flint
The Rats, the Bats amp; the Ugly
Military Court C, George Bernard Shaw City,
Judge McCairn presiding.
"As a captive it is your duty to attempt to escape. Not inflict a cowardly attack while masquerading as prisoners. Not to head further into the scorpiary," said Captain Tesco.
Chip looked at him long and steadily. "Well?" demanded the TC. "Explain that."
"Can I ask you a question, Captain?" said Chip.
"No. I ask the questions. You answer them!" snapped the TC.
"This is not the Spanish inquisition, Captain," said the judge. "It may be something that the lance corporal requires clarified. You may ask, Lance Corporal."
"Thank you, Your Honor." Chip turned on the trial counsel. "Do you know just how many soldiers have been trapped and then escaped from behind a Magh' force field, before we did it?"
"That's an unreasonable and irrelevant question."
"It seems perfectly reasonable to me," said the judge. "The answer is none, Captain Tesco. If we do not include the lance corporal."
Chip acknowledged this with a nod. "That's what I was trying to say, sir. During this war there must have been many thousands of soldiers trapped behind the force field when the Magh' advanced. But the only human soldier to escape traveled in what Captain Tesco here says was the wrong direction. Based on the fact that, of the fourteen of us who started, eleven of us got out, I'd say that that makes my direction the right one and his direction the wrong one."
"But you were not, in fact trying to escape. You didn't expect to escape by going that way," snarled the prosecution relentlessly.
"No, sir," said Chip, beginning to get irritated. "We expected to get killed. No one had ever escaped, remember. But we weren't prisoners, is the point. I wasn't captured until the very last stage, after which the only real part I took in the fighting was to try and protect a civilian. Although you seem to have forgotten about it, Captain, it was our duty, as you put it, to encounter and engage the enemy. What you meant was why didn't we commit suicide by taking on the Magh' in head-on encounters where they outnumbered us thousands to one, instead of fighting them from ambush and in hit-and-run attacks? That would have saved you the effort of this trial. Well, sir, we did 'encounter and engage' the enemy. We beat them, Captain Tesco. We beat more Maggots than the whole of your high command ever has. One soldier, one mucking Vat private, one civilian, a cute little monkey and a bunch of rats and bats, thinking creatures that the army uses as cannon fodder, proved that we could do what you couldn't. That's what this joke of trial is all about. You've got to shut this Vat up before the whole lot of you brass get showed up as total incompetents."
"Have you quite finished?" asked the judge dryly.
"Yes," said Chip, in a militant tone that said I could go on for another half-an-hour.
"Well, let me make something clear too, Lance Corporal. No trial I preside over will ever be a joke. The bulk of these charges are enough to make me angry, never mind you. I will make you my personal promise that the JAG will be conducting official enquiries into how these charges got through to trial in the first place. However, the process of the courts must be respected. I will have no more such outbursts, Lance Corporal. The only evidence of substance which remains is that of the depositions of Virginia Shaw. Rape is a serious charge, no matter how incompetently handled. Rape-"
There was a scream of wood being devoured.
Chainsaw in hand, Virginia Shaw kicked the now lockless door open and stepped into the crowded courtroom. The sun was behind her, a flight of bats above and the rats running a phalanx of interference around her. She had a dirty-white red-and-brown stained bandana holding back her hair, and a small galago on her shoulder. On the witness stand, the rats had looked amusing. Now, stalking around her, lips rolled back, red-tipped fangs exposed, they looked deadly instead.
"Rape never happened!" she said, loudly and clearly.
It was very plain-by the horrified expression on his face-that the trial counsel knew just who had burst into the courtroom. "What is the meaning of this interruption? Sergeant at Arms-"
His voice was lost in the mechanical yowl, as she gunned the chainsaw. It was remarkably effective as a crowd silencer. Her glasses gleamed through the blue smoke as she spoke. "My name is Virginia Mary Shaw. I am the woman that Chip Connolly is accused of raping. You will hear my testimony. Statements-which are complete forgeries-have been entered in my name, to try to convict an innocent man. I will correct this situation."
The judge's gavel banging proved ineffectual this time. It took the mechanical scream of the chainsaw again, and Fluff, standing on Virginia's head, roaring in his best sergeant major voice: "ALLAYOU