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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 galagoa tiny little lemur-like-critter with a big mouth and delusions about being the worlds 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.

The intrepid team of mentally uplifted rats and bats, and their vat-born human leader had not only pulled off the only victory the beleaguered colony's feeble military forces had won against the invading aliens, but had also uncovered the secret that the invaders were really a feint, being under the control of the other aliens which the naive humans had thought were their allies. Unfortunately, that was the easy part, because now they had to convince their boneheaded military bureaucracy (burdened with incompetents and riddled with quisling humans) of their discovery, and keep from being court-martialed, drugged into submission, or executed by the human traitors. And they had to do this quickly, before the aliens launched their surprise attack. Fortunately, they had found a way around the alien's mental programming. What's more, the daring and resourceful Fluff, apparently the ineffectual pet of one of the colony's ruling class, was on their side. Only Fluff can save us now...