"Grrrumargggggggggg!" roared the savage space beast. Bill had never heard a Chinger utter this particular outcry before. He'd heard Chingers curse in Greek, Swahili, Russian and of course their own hissing and eructing language. Still and all, this particular specimen uttered the cry with such complete conviction that Bill took its word for it. Never one to question the wisdom of the hasty retreat in such brutal matters as these, Bill nonetheless immediately saw that an exit, albeit hasty, would put him in the path of submachine bullets. Instead, he jumped behind the overstuffed couch.
"Take this, you foul creature!" cried J. Edgar Insufledor. When the beast was just a yard away, the Director fired. The submachine chattered and bullets chunk-a-chunked into the lizard's green hide, kicking up divots of flesh. The Chinger sprayed blood like a lawn-watering device. It was pushed back a full foot, its guns knocked spinning from ruined claws. A single knife remained in its possession as it screeched sanguinely and leaped for the director again, slashing his weapon like molten lightning.
Bill cringed helplessly behind the couch. He didn't know what was going on here, but it was certainly a great deal deadlier than Denubian tiddlywinks.
"Aha! You enjoy eating hot lead!" the Deputy Director said calmly through gritted teeth, his still-fuming cigar sticking up like an exclamation point. "Then have some more, Chinger!"
J. Edgar Insufledor shot off the knife hand and then put another clip of bullets in the Chinger's chest. The creature went down like a sack of bloody potatoes, spasming and slashing still at its prey. Jaws snapping, it pulled itself toward the Director.
J. Edgar Insufledor threw aside his Thompson. "This is a job for Deathdealer," he said, a smile crinkling the corners of his mouth and eyes. From behind his desk he pulled out a two-handed claymore sword. "Okay Chinger. Let me show you how a real man deals with a bowby alien."
J. Edgar stepped forward and proceeded to hack open the Chinger's skull with untrammeled ferocity. Green blood geysered everywhere, splattering on the walls and, when he ventured a peek, into Bill's eyes. By the time he cleared his vision the Chinger was literally chopped into nuggets on the carpet, oozing and stone-cold dead. Only the tip of its tail flickered about like a snake whose head has been lopped off.
"Bill!" cried J. Edgar Insufledor. Somehow in the struggle, the top of his shirt had unbuttoned, revealing a clump of manly chest hair. He put a possessive foot on the largest chunk of the creature and seemed to pose like a big game hunter. "Some tussle, eh? Wise of you to take cover! These varmints are mean mothers!"
Hesitantly, Bill rose up from his hiding place. "You wouldn't have a shot of whiskey hiding anywhere about, would you?"
"Nope. Don't touch the stuff. Harms my precious Puritan bodily fluids. But your taste for it and your unusual record of service is why the GBI wants you!"
Skimmilquetoast stuck his head into the office. "Oh dear. Thank Mithra, sir! You got it. The assassin Chinger just charged through, slapped me aside and headed straight in for YOU!" The man turned to Bill and gave him a broad wink. Bill, nonplussed, could only gape. "Yet, once again, you have saved yourself and the day, to say nothing of the welfare of the Galaxy!"
The Director grunted. "All in a day's work. Just get a crew in to clean this mess up. And oh — mount the usual trophy with its head, eh Skimmilquetoast? Makes for a wonderful dinner conversation piece!"
"Yes, sir!"
"Now then, Bill. You will be dispatched to Barworld with complete instructions surgically subcutaneously planted in your left earlobe. However, although you certainly enjoy your drink, it has been determined that you are not sufficiently — er — alcoholic, not to mince words, for the full cover we need." Insufledor sucked on his cigar, then scooped up a folder drenched in lizard blood and handed it to Bill. "This contains the information on the most alcoholic Trooper still serving in the Galactic Troopers. He shall be your companion. The first part of your mission shall be to find this man, sober him up long enough to brief him, then bring him back. We will then send you off to Barworld to see into this very important matter."
"Yes, sir!" he snapped ecstatically, visions of countless bottles dancing in his head.
He didn't want to louse up a chance to go to Barworld! It was a Trooper's fantasy, and one of Bill's few heartfelt ambitions.
"Skimmilquetoast. Show this fine Trooper out. Oh, and get a move on getting those janitors in to clean this up. Tell security to be a little more on their toes, eh? Can't do their work for them all the time, now, can I?"
"Yes, sir! Trooper, would you please be so kind as to aid me in hauling this disgusting thing from the Director's office so as not to disgust him any further?" The assistant picked up one of the feet and nodded toward the other. Bill shrugged and did so, bringing his ample strength to bear. Outside the office, the Director's door slammed shut. The Chinger's arm got stuck in a fishhook-coated modernist wire sculpture. Bill tugged harder and the Chinger's leg, half-ripped off with bullet wounds anyway, came off trailing hunks of lizard flesh, veins and wires.
Wires?
Still, Bill half expected as much. There was something fishy about that lizard.
"Best idea the Director ever had — and Bureaupsych concurs. He deals every day with the threats to the welfare of the Empire from his desk but he never gets to actually kill anything. So, every once in awhile, we throw in a cyborg Commupop or Chinger to keep him on his toes. Old man loves it! He'll have a smile on his face for at least a week — and will maybe leave off the ritual staff whipping for a while!"
Bill tossed the leg down and wiped his hands on his pants. "You got to give me the details on this Trooper I'm supposed to go get, and then point me to the nearest MacRotgut's. I feel like a nice MacDTs for a liquid lunch."
"Sure, Sarge." He handed Bill a folder and a watch with a complicated gadget on it. "Quantum subspace radio for top-secret communications if you got any problems or questions. Oh, and by the way. Best to keep that foot out of your mouth, eh?"
Bill was tempted to put the foot somewhere else a good deal more satisfactory than his mouth, but he decided that since he was going to have to rely on this bowb-brain for information for a long time, he'd better not do anything quite so enthusiastic.
He went for that drink he'd been promising himself, hoping to encounter no cyborg Chingers or Commupops along the way.
CHAPTER 2
Bill was in complete total and utter bliss.
Well, not precisely complete. Or utter. What little that remained unobliterated in the way of deep human emotions in Bill twinged ever so slightly, lifted their heads feebly from the abyssal depths of depression and, like frail shoots in April lured on by the siren promise of spring, began to flower with weensy buds of hope.
Barworld!
For all the years — it seemed like centuries — that he had served in the Troopers, in the grueling grapple of combat and the even worse conditions in boot camp on both sides of the boot, stationed on pustulating planets and in stagnant starships that made him want to flip his cookies just thinking about them, doomed to a dark bleak existence of hard beds, hard heads and no hard creds ... for all those years, the concept of R&R was strictly verboten in the Service; leave had long since left. A Trooper's duty was to serve his Emperor twenty-four and a half hours a day, three hundred and sixty-six days a year — and that under the shrunken Galactic Disgustan Calendar, only half as long as the Augustan. The only joys in a Trooper's life were two-credit/two-minute ladies of the morning (the ladies of the evening were far too expensive), and in smoking de-tarred and de-nicotinized cigarettes (in the hopes that they would shorten their miserable, wasted lives in this dubiously pleasurable fashion), Comix (albeit jam-packed with subliminal loyalty reinforcement, like Chingers and Commupops generally being the bad guys) and, of course, booze. However, even the simple joys of Trooper life tended to be watered-down and tepid. The doxies were old and bored and tended to use their creds as down payments on powered wheelchairs. The cigarettes were made of dried tobacco stems, since the
real stuff was reserved for the officer classes. Comix doubled for toilet paper; the ultimate literary criticism.
And the booze...
To say that the booze was the pits was to insult underarms and coal mines all over the known universe. It tended to be repulsively flavored, cheaply manufactured ethanol, rumored to be from Undertakerworld, so that in lieu of alcohol embalming fluid was often used.
Bill hadn't known the difference for a long time, but whenever during his various adventures he'd actually tasted some real beer, some real wine, and most of all genuine unsynthetic whiskey, gin and rum, he knew that he wanted to dedicate his life to finding a world where he could sample again the fruits of this delicious alcoholic vine.
Such a world, it was whispered in the darkness, was Barworld.
And the Galactic Feds were actually sending him there!
That was if he could only find this guy whose dossier had been given him in that vanilla folder. (He knew it was vanilla and not manila because he'd gotten drunk at his liquid lunch and eaten it.)
As it happened, the Trooper that Bill had been dispatched to find — Lieutenant Hardtack Brandox, Jr. — was at this moment right here on the same planet as Bill, the main location of Galactic bureaucratic matters and center for the manufacture of women's underwear, Drawerworld.
A good deal of red tape, filing of requests and crossed communications later (to say nothing of stop-offs at bars and latrines to research Brandox's famous drinking habits and, perhaps, maybe a snort or two for himself), Bill found Lieutenant Brandox's squadron to be on jinx Ether Force Base.
"Make it fast," snarled Captain Quarterpounder, looking up suspiciously at Bill from a mountain of paperwork. "Lieutenant Brandy? What a boozer. Sweats pure ethyl. But you're too late, bowb-brains. Should have been here a day earlier. He's just been reassigned to Some Godforsaken Planet."
"Which planet?"
"Some Godforsaken Planet, bowb — don't you hear very well? That's the name. That's what they call it. Deathworld 69 to be more specific. One of the several hundred slaughterhouses of combat between humans and the Chingers, along with the rest of the filthy ETs in the universe, Ahura Mazda rot their alien green bones!"
"Well, perhaps you can call him back. I am on official business." Bill showed him the ID bracelet that the GBI had given him, strapped on the wrist under his communicator.
"Tough termites, Trooper. That bit of bureaucratic bowb means nothing here. Brandox is well on his alcohol-sodden way to the lift-off fields."
The captain gloomily examined a chronometer. Satisfied that the chrono was still metered, he examined the standard issue Trooper Clock bearing the scowling face of the Beloved Emperor. "Should be blasting off in about two hours. If you move your butt you might just catch it." He grinned with cheerful sadism. "Or you can maybe go along for the ride. I hear that Deathworld 69 is really in this year for suicidal tours of duty."
"No thanks. I've got something to live for!" said Bill enthusiastically.
The captain eyed him suspiciously. "Something wrong with you, Trooper? You're supposed to die doing your duty. Come home with your shield or on it. You know the bowb."
"No sir! I mean yes, sir!" Bill realized with horror that he'd almost spilled the beans about being on his way to Barworld — a definite no-no, since not only was the mission top secret but the captain would probably shoot him from sheer jealousy. "I think it was just a spasm of pure joy from beholding our dear Emperor's face there smiling away on the bulkhead."
"Yeah? Well, stow it when you are around here, buddy. It's bowb-your-buddy month here on Drawerworld and we've only got one month per year. Understand?"
Bill sneered, showing his fangs in his best DI manner. He saluted with both his right hands. "Yes sir!"
He trotted off for the takeoff fields to find Lt. Brandox before the starship made its lift-off.
The Happy Trails Takeoff fields were about two hours away by grav-car, but Bill, through breakneck speed, high-reflex steering and the sacrifice of a few dogs, cats, a little old lady and a second lieutenant, managed to make it to them in just a little over an hour and a half.
As always, when he approached the mighty Imperial launching pads Bill gasped an appreciative gasp or two at the sight of the towering behemoth starships reaching imperially toward the sky, their shiny impervium sparkling in the sunlight, the silvery needles of their bows pointed upward toward challenge and adventure.
Then, as usual, he experienced a depressing mood swing as he was admitted by the checkpoint guard past the ceremonial holo-facade of these imaginary vessels into the grungy and smoggy reality of the true Imperial takeoff fields. Greasy smoke poured up from cracks in the ground. The smell of diesel fuel and sulfur permeated the air. Blackened technicians trucked around in dilapidated service vehicles looking like recently nuked worker ants. There were maybe twenty starships in various states of disrepair rising up from the ground like twisted mushrooms in a bed of mold. Their skins were pitted by the craters of interstellar dust, spattered with the bird droppings of countless worlds.
The question was, which one was Brandox's?
Bill stopped a gray-skinned Trooper wearing corporal's stripes on his eyepatch and inquired.
"Deathworld 69? That's like a really hard question. We've got maybe three starships getting ready to heave up mightily through the atmosphere. Hard to tell them apart." The corporal, Bill noticed, had the telltale scars on his forehead of a jobotomy. That was why he wasn't being shipped off himself; he'd probably been a trouble-maker or attempted to go AWO (there was no AWOL or Absent WithOut Leave in This Bowb's Army, since "leave" was a foreign concept). A jobotomy was like a lobotomy, only they stuck a little programmed computer in the place where there used to be about half the gray matter; it kept the victim in line and gave him a preprogrammed duty. The corporal sighed. "Wish I could go with them into glorious battle. Alas, I am but a ground jockey. Gotta serve my Empire here amidst the dirt and gravity. But like the Emperor says, 'They also serve who stand and wait!'"
"Wait? Wait for what? Just knock off that pseudo-romantic bowb and tell me which ship it is."
The corporal just grinned, glassy-eyed.
"Never mind," said Bill. "I'll find it myself."
It shouldn't be too hard, Bill muttered to himself. Starships about ready to take off from the ground look a lot different from the moribund, inactive sort. Like their ports were closed: good clue! And they shake around like a pent-up volcano, spurting steam from their seams and generally looking like water heaters about to blow. Hell, some of them did blow, instantly killing all aboard and anyone in the immediate vicinity. In the past, with atomic drives, there had been nuclear explosions that destroyed whole cities. This was why atomic drives were no longer allowed for lift-off use. Steam catapults hurled them into the air, then chemical booster rockets were used. At least when these blew up, they did so discreetly in the atmosphere where no high-level officers were around.
It didn't take long for Bill to find a likely candidate for the Rocket Ship Most Likely To. There was a particularly noisy and noisome bucket of bolts in midfield that was vibrating like a teakettle at full boil. Its engines were building up to an excited white-hot state of excitement, and lights were spinning wildly everywhere. However, since a large gangplank was still extended and a noncom was standing at its base with a clipboard and an atomic ballpoint, Bill thought maybe there were still a few minutes left until ignition.
"Hey buddy, no way are we going to fit that grav-car you're driving into the BEELZEBUB!" said the noncom, a beefy sergeant with a chip on his shoulder. It was a corn chip, apparently from lunch, but Bill didn't have the time or the patience to tell the guy how stupid it looked.
"I'm not shipping the car, I —"
"Then get it the hell outta here. To one of the satellite lots. Take a right at the abandoned second-stage thruster, and a left at the graveyard till you see the pile of rusty rockets. Move it."
"Look, is this rocket going to Some Godforsaken Pl
anet?"
Sgt. Porky looked at him like he was from Hayseedworld. "Well of course it's going to some godforsaken planet. They all do."
"No, that's the name of the place. Some Godforsaken Planet."
"Look, buddy, if you ain't got a name, I can't help you." A noisy blast of steam drowned out his voice.
"What?" said Bill.
"What's on Second Baseworld," said the guy.
"Who?"
"Who's on Firstworld. Plays shortstop for the Yankee Imperialists. Every sports-loving Trooper knows that, bowbhead." His eyes squinted up with suspicion. "You a Chinger spy or something?"
Bill refrained from killing him on the spot. Teeth grinding, he shoved his official Galactic Bureau of Investigation documents under the corporal's nose.
"Geez. A Fed. Sorry, you excellency. How can I serve you?" said the fat man, suddenly shiveringly penitent.
"Where is this starship going?"
"Deathworld 69, sir. In the Missionary Position nebula."
"That's Some Godforsaken Planet!"
"Yes sir, it certainly is." The sergeant nodded his head emphatically. "It's real hell. Troopers who go there never come back. Alive. Why's the GBI sending you there? Some kind of special mission?"
Bill sighed off his frustration. "No, I'm not going there. I need to get a guy in this ship who has been dispatched there. We need him. You got an officer in there name of Brandox?"
The guard consulted his clipboard. "Yeah. Here we go, sir. Brandox. He's aboard. But we've only got five minutes till we seal the port. Wouldn't do to have a starship lift off into the near vacuum with its barn door hanging wide open, now would it?"
"One more joke and you are dead. Stop all lift-off procedures instantly."
On The Planet Of The Hippies From Hell Page 2
