Bill 7 - the Galactic Hero (3 page)

Yoiks! Maybe Kadaffi was paying attention after all. Bill's shorts suddenly headed up, following the antigrav unit. Fortunately, they were the standard trooper industrial-strength undershorts, so Bill was carried along for the ride.

The little white arrow of the commandos lifted gently — and limply — out of the battle. The heavy armor, laden with other military gear and possibly living bodies, slowly rose away from the surface toward the transport.

Bill, on the other hand, was not weighed down at all. He shot into the sky.

The arrow turned and wafted up, pointing the way up to where Captain Kadaffi's bodyguards waited to hose out the suits for re-use. It moved almost delicately, twirling over the battlefield as it gradually rose into the air.

Bill could feel the wind rushing by and hung onto the antigrav unit's straps for dear life as it jerked him back and forth and twisted him around. As rides go, this one was pretty good. He'd paid good money at The Trooper's Friend Amusement Park and Knocking Shop for stuff that wasn't nearly as violent and nauseating. And they didn't even have the real threat of a hideously painful death, which was a key feature of this one.

It wasn't just the wind. Bill was definitely getting colder. He whipped up through the clouds, and little crystals of ice started collecting on all the uncovered parts of his body. They formed up real nice on his foot, especially. The frost formed a pattern there, and the cold started working its way up his leg. The thinner air made it harder to breathe, and that provided a distraction of sorts, but wondering which of the two problems would kill him wasn't much of an improvement over worrying about just one of them.

His teeth started chattering. His whole body was shivering, and he was sweating with fear. The droplets of sweat froze up almost immediately, and the shivering shook them off. Bill was leaving a little delicate trail of ice particles behind him, shimmering in reflected sunlight. Which would have been quite pretty — if he'd had the leisure to reflect ... and if he hadn't been quickly freezing to death.

He rolled up into a ball to conserve warmth. He would've taken his foot off to run the laser over his hands and body, but he was shaking too much.

There was no screaming this time. Even if he'd been zooming upwards in the no-moaning section, he would have ignored it now. Moaning was all he had left, and he was determined to enjoy it to the fullest. Moaning was something of an art form in the troopers, and troopers were expected to stay in practice, in case of just such an emergency. It was closely related to screaming, so a lot of what Bill moaned on the way up was very similar to what he had screamed on the way down. He even did them in the same order. He started with a few rounds of “Oh bowb, oh bowb,” moved on to “Please don't let me die,” segued into “Heeeeelp,” and finished up with the old standard, “Mommy!”

It did about as much good as the screaming had, which is to say none at all. But it was important to do these things properly. Freezing and asphyxiating to death while flying straight up into the stratosphere in his underwear hadn't been covered in boot camp, nor in Bill's fusetender's specialist course, nor had anyone ever mentioned the possibility any time since then. So he had to rely on his carefully honed instincts, but moaning definitely seemed to be in order.

Bill couldn't think what should come after the moaning, so he ran through it again, and then got ready to lose consciousness. He had a lot of experience at that.

He could see the stars now, not twinkling very much because the air was so thin up here. He was definitely dying. He could tell because both his feet felt the same now, the manufactured one and the real one, and the force of the wind past his ears was diminishing. His nose was numb, and his hands weren't far from it. And now he was hallucinating.

There was no question he was hallucinating, because he was seeing a huge black shape looming over him, and here he was on the edge of space, where there sure weren't any huge black things. And he was heading straight for it.

The big black thing grew eyes, opened them, and stared straight at Bill. A terrible glowing red mouth opened. Then the monster sprouted arms, lots of them, and started to reach out to gather Bill into its hideous stomach.

Bill wanted to go out kicking and screaming, but there wasn't enough air left to scream. He activated the knife in the bottom of his foot. The saw popped out instead, and he attacked with that.

There was a solid k-thunk. Somewhere in the distance Bill thought he could hear something screaming. There was one flash of light, and then everything went black.

Flat. Gray. Cold.

Bill gradually became aware that the whole universe was flat, gray, and cold. At least, what he could see of it.

Was this heaven? Bill didn't have a very clear idea of what heaven was supposed to look like, his early religious training being only a dim memory, but this didn't seem quite right.

On the other hand, Bill had considerable experience with waking up someplace he didn't recognize without knowing how he'd gotten there. This seemed a lot more like something repulsive, as always, rather than heaven.

He took a closer look at his new surroundings. Flat, really flat, and pretty boring. The surface had a regular texture to it, a sort of a raised herringbone pattern. That somehow looked familiar.

Where had Bill seen it before? In an astronomy textbook? No, he'd never seen an astronomy textbook. In an old issue of Imperial Geographic? No, Bill only looked at the pictures in the ads of the naked women in that. In a training manual?

That rang a bell. It wasn't in a manual, but it had something to de, with the military, didn't it?

Yes! It was skid-proof metal decking, just like the floor in the barracks. Bill's spirits rose immediately. Maybe none of this was real — maybe he had never been volunteered into the commandos and gone on that mission, maybe he had just fallen down and hit his head on the way out for his twelve-hour pass, or fallen down drunk after coming back in. That was something much more familiar and reassuring.

Then Bill remembered something about a giant black monster with lots of arms and legs, and the hair on his neck lifted in horror at the thought. A spider? It had to be a dream. There were no spiders in space, and he'd never heard of a spider that big, nor had he ever seen one on any of the planets whose hazards he had suffered during his years of service. Not even Veniola had spiders that big. He must have been dreaming about spiders.

That was a little unusual. Most of Bill's alcoholically inspired dreams involved giant snakes and rabbit holes, or elephants trying to pull peanuts out of caves, or sometimes even Bill doing with women all those things he never got the chance to do when he was awake. Sometimes he would dream about barrels of beer, vats of vodka, showers of champagne, waves of whiskey, and all the other alliterative intoxicants that life in the Troopers made so necessary. But he never dreamt about spiders.

Then what could this all mean —?

Bill lifted his head off the decking and looked around. The room didn't look much like the barracks back at Camp Buboe. It looked a lot like a loading dock, or a warehouse, or a troop transport.

A troop transport? Bill let his head fall back to the floor with a thud. Had he fallen back into the clutches of the heroic Captain Kadaffi? The spider would have been better.

Bill gazed dully across the clean, freshly painted metal deck. The wave of despair at the thought of being a survivor and a hero in the commandos kept him from realizing at first that the deck was too clean, too freshly painted. The personnel hold of a troop scow would never be this clean. Why, they were even built dirtier than this.

So just what the bowb had happened?

Bill finally realized that the only way to find out anything was to get off the floor and look around.

He stood up. The helmet of his combat jump suit was lying to one side, next to the antigrav unit. He was wearing only his shirt and his uniform undershorts. So he hadn't imagined all of that, after all. That was interesting.

He was in a small room that could have been anywhere, as long as that anywhere was in the Troopers. The walls were the same color as the floor, and the same material. If it had been meant for carrying enlisted men, the walls would have been the most nauseating greenish yellow imaginable. If it were for officers, the walls would have been papered in red and gold flock. So he was in a cargo bay. The only thing to do, then, was explore.

Except that the one door was locked. Bill pounded on it for a while, and at last a voice came from the other side, saying, “Yeah, yeah, keep your bowby pants on.”

“I haven't got any pants,” Bill whined.

“Then hold your horses,” the voice instructed.

“I haven't got any horses,” Bill lamented. “I used to have a robo-mule, but that was a long, long time ago, on a planet far, far, away, when life was much better and I was studying to be a Fertilizer Technician.” He sobbed sympathetically at the happy memory.

“Just shut up and wait for the General,” the voice explained.

“Tell me you didn't just say 'General,'” Bill hoped.

“OK. I didn't just say 'General,'” the voice agreed. “But here he comes.”

The heavy metal door flew open, catching Bill square on the temple. He stumbled, staggered, and fell to his hands and knees.

“Well, well, well. What have we got here?”

Bill looked up at the voice. It was invisible, of course, but its owner was about the size and shape of a refrigerator box. He had more stars and ribbons on his chest than most refrigerator boxes (except, of course, for the emperor's own refrigerator box, which held ministerial rank). The name 'Weissearse' was embroidered in gold thread over the breast pocket of his desert camouflage muumuu.

“That isn't necessary, Trooper. A simple salute is sufficient,” the General alliterated.

Two MPs hauled Bill to his feet, where he snapped off his classiest two-right-handed salute. Normally, this was Bill's best shot at impressing an officer, but General Weissearse was having none of it. “Let's have a little chat,” he said. “Escort this Trooper to the debriefing room.”

The MPs picked Bill up by the elbows, tilted him sideways, and carried him out into the corridor. A few turns and hatchways later, with only a few severe blows to the cranium getting through the tight spaces, Bill was being strapped into the debriefing chair. A debriefing technician taped electrodes to Bill's skull and genitals, and another used what appeared to be a small machete to take a cell sample.

The General hulked in one corner muttering to himself. Bill could hear him, but if he turned to look, the electrodes kicked in with a blast of voltage. The more he turned, the more sizzling the electrodes became. Staring straight ahead proved to be a much better idea.

“So, Trooper,” General Weissearse smarmed cordially, “how long have you been a spy for the Chingers?”

“Not very long, sir.” Bill jumped as the technicians gave him a little shot. “I mean of course I'm not a spy at all. Death to all Chingers! Look in my record — the only Chinger I ever saw alive was one I met in boot camp.” He twitched again. “I hate all Chingers!” This time they didn't give him a jolt, so he got bolder. “Could someone tell me where I am?”

“Don't you know, Trooper? Weren't you sent here by the Chingers to worm your way into our confidence and sabotage our plans?”

“Look at my helmet! It's Imperial issue, standard stuff!” Bill yelped, anticipating his next shot of electricity. “Look at my underwear!”

“Don't be disgusting, Trooper.”

“No, really, I'm as loyal as any Trooper!”

The General snorted. “So you admit being disloyal?”

“Yow!” Bill jerked from the jolt. “No, no! I love the Emperor! I love the Empress! I love all the Emperor's sisters and his cousins and his aunts! His sisters and his cousins and his aunts!”

General Weissearse turned to one of the technicians. “Raise the voltage. He must be lying, trying the old song ploy.” He loomed flabbily over Bill on the table. “You know that there is nothing to be gained by lying — other than my displeasure,” he thundered. “The Lord will bring the truth to light in the end!”

“Would that be Ahura Mazda?” Bill asked.

“God is on our side!” roared the man in the muumuu. “It is only right that we help him out with a few electrodes. Besides, it's better that you suffer a little here and come to the truth than that you suffer the eternal pains of damnation later. Right?”

“Of course, sir. Right. Only the truth?” Bill smiled broadly and falsely. “You let me know what it is, I'll say it, and everybody's satisfied? OK? Yeow!” he yeowed as a blast of current fried him.

“Wrong answer, Trooper. You don't understand.” Weissearse shook his head sadly and his jowls joggled. “You must unburden yourself of the truth freely, without prompting or duress. Raise the voltage again. Jolt him if he lies. Report, Trooper!”

Bill looked around for help. A couple of bored technicians were standing, scratching their crotches as they took in all the excitement. One was at the electric controls that were frying Bill. The other was staring at a screen and waiting for the computer to spew out its response to Bill's tissue sample. They started talking quietly — which involved more crotch scratching — about their plans for the evening, which weren't much since they were stuck on a small ship in the middle of nowhere. All of which did not help Bill in the slightest. This was a situation that called for daring, creativity, and imagination. Unfortunately, Bill was completely devoid of all three qualities. “Yeow!” He was also running out of time.

As quickly as he could, he cobbled something together out of the most recent literature he could remember reading. He knew that Generals generally liked complicated stories, so he worked out a story involving three brothers named Karamazov, a desert planet with gigantic worms, a Japanese prince named Genji, a robot detective who looked like a man, and a great white whale. He wasn't sure where the whale came from, but the rest were from recent issues of Superlative Six Superhero Comix.

But General Weissearse was destined never to hear this epic tale of military logic and excuse-making. Just as Bill began — “Call me Bill” — the computer chimed and began to print out a long, long scroll of paper.