"Harrison, Harry - Bill, the Galactic Hero 7 - The Final Incoherent Adventure" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

He looked around and saw the rest of the volunteers. Their radios were remotely controlled as well, so all they could do was wave to each other and plummet, which they did for quite a while.
Then they broke through the clouds.
They were seen at once and the firing started. Bullets and shells and laser blasts whizzed around them - but the entire squad was falling so fast by this time that no one could draw a bead on them.
But the squad could see just fine. And what they could see was lots and lots of tiny little figures that were getting larger very fast. The little figures were pointing up at the plummeting troopers and shooting at them. But the good Captain Kadaffi had other things to think about and hadn't pushed the button on his remote control yet. They couldn't shoot back. All they could do, really, was fall, and they were getting very good at that.
Bill didn't think they needed any more practice at falling. Even he, dense as he was from time to time, had mastered the falling technique in the first few seconds. Of course, there was always the possibility that this was their entire mission. A trooper in an armored combat suit weighed quite a lot, and could probably destroy a small building if he scored a direct hit on it. But that would probably destroy the suit, and suits were expensive - much more so than Troopers. So the captain had probably just forgotten to turn on the antigrav units. That was reassuring. Some.
Bill tried to relax and enjoy the descent and be ready for whatever happened next. Much to his surprise, that turned out to be an abrupt yank upwards, driving all of the lower part of the suit into his crotch.
When he regained consciousness, he was wafting gently downward toward the waiting arms of the enemy. They weren't waiting very patiently. They were sending up a lot of stuff to welcome him, and judging by how it exploded, it wasn't an entirely friendly welcome. And they were getting the range.
Bill looked down at a whole army trying to kill him. He looked up toward the transport, where only one man was trying to kill him.
He figured his odds and made his decision. Kadaffi was more of a threat.
He reached up and felt the helmet. The big antenna would be for the remote control. The middle-sized one would be for the radio to the other troopers, if that ever worked. The little one - here it was! - would be the locater beacon. He got a good grip on it and yanked, but the designers had planned for that, and it did not budge. Even with both hands, he couldn't break it off. He could blast it with his gun, but he didn't want to risk destroying the antigrav unit, or, for that matter, his head.
If only he could get to his Swiss Army Foot! He twisted around until he could reach his foot, tore off the duct tape, and pressed the button that released the tool kit. It was a little gizmo; small enough to fit in his hand, with various tools that folded out of the sides. Small knife, nail file, large knife, scissors, awl, flat-head screwdriver, Phillips-head screwdriver, bottle opener, can opener - where the bowb was it? At last he found what he was looking for - the portable foldout bolt cutter. In an instant he had the antenna sliced off and discarded.
Now that bowbhead Captain Kadaffi couldn't tell where Bill was.
Bill started firing his machine guns at the enemy. He didn't care if he hit anything, but the recoil would push him in the other direction. He started drifting away from the action, but the wind was against him, and he was still going down. By now he was wreathed in smoke and completely alone. Pretty soon now he'd be locked in combat, with the enemy really aiming at him, instead of just shooting blindly. Not at all what he had in mind.
First he used up the rest of his machine-gun ammo. That reduced his weight some, enough to slow down his descent, but not enough to stop it entirely. Then he dropped all his grenades, hoping that there was no one below who would be hit by one. He didn't want to get anyone irritated, especially anyone with a blaster. Still not enough weight, though.
The gloves with the built-in blasters were next. Then the backpack with the dehydrated water pills, fresh disposable underwear made of recycled toilet paper that could also be used as toilet paper, pseudo-meal pills, and Imperial issue last effects. He was still falling slowly.
The armored combat boot may have injured someone when it dropped, and his armored trousers left a small crater. Now Bill was low enough to see the ground - and the gunners on the ground could see him.
But by now he was only drifting slowly towards the ground. He loosened his belt and let fly. His armored pants dropped and thudded to the ground and Bill was flying steady.
Except that the wind was still pushing him over the enemy lines but, with his underwear fluttering proudly in the breeze and his arms held resolutely over his head, Bill hoped that he might be pretty safe. And he seemed to be right. No one was shooting at him, not even the other troopers.
He could see them now, floating below him and well ahead, slipping into a formation for attack. As long as he wasn't involved it looked kind of interesting. They formed into a wedge - with an empty spot at the front where he was supposed to be - and charged into the enemy lines.
Of course, they were charging down, too, and Bill was going down with them. Captain Kadaffi might not have known where Bill was, but he was sure trying to get him killed anyway.
What else could he drop to lighten his weight? His boot was already gone along with his pants. Bill really hoped he wouldn't have to drop his combat foot; he had no idea when he might be able to find a replacement, and he'd spent altogether too much time without a foot on that leg in the last few years.
He did take the foot off, though. The small combat laser built into the Swiss Army Foot was powerful enough to cut away pieces of the remaining armor. Bit by bit, he carved away the entire upper half of the combat suit, sparing only the helmet and the antigrav unit. Taking the straps from the back-mounted antigrav pack in his teeth, he shrugged out of the rest of the outfit.
Ah, stable flight again. Looping the straps through his shorts, he relaxed and watched what he could see of the action below. Which wasn't much, although it looked like the suicide mission was working out as planned. Suicidal. The Imperial Troopers were getting but creamed. For a fleeting instant Bill felt sorry for his former comrades. But the sensation faded quickly and he wished he had some of those dehydrated beer pills.
Bill had been in more than his share of battles, but he'd never had a chance to pay much attention to one before. When you're in the middle of the action, it makes even less sense than it does from the generals' point of view, which was pretty dim at best. There was always a lot of noise and confusion and, of course, people shooting at you. This means you keep your head down and don't see very much. In fact, the less you see, generally speaking, the better. If you can see the enemy, they can see you. For that matter, it's a good idea to stay out of sight of your own side when the bulk of a Trooper's training was how to obey orders and clean latrines. How to aim and shoot various weapons was just an afterthought. Bill had learned how to use a blaster long ago, but he'd done it by reading the Official Imperial Trooper Comix version of the manual. Then he got a lot of practice on Veniola and various other challenging and deadly planets.
But no matter how good he got at gunning down officers and other enemies, he never got the full satisfaction of warfare, of knowing that his work was worthwhile and appreciated, that it was part of some larger effort. Sure, the news comix told all about how the Troopers were sweeping the Chingers from all the planets of the galaxy, but they seemed to keep sweeping them from the same planets all the time. From the ground, which Bill spent a lot of time staying very close to in combat, there didn't appear to be any pattern to it at all.
From here, though, it was all different. Up here in the air with his shorts flapping jauntily in the breeze, waving gaily to the troops on both sides below and wondering where the closest bar might be, Bill could see the whole battle spread out like a map. The Chinger forces were arranged in a long, thin, green rectangle, just like in the news comix, and the Imperial troops were coming at them in the shapes of big, curved red arrows. It wasn't the best way to win a battle, but it did look good on the air reconnaissance photos that the general staff had to send to the Emperor.
The two big arrows moved forward and back, forward and back again, not making much progress toward anything, but getting a little bit smaller each time as the points were blasted away.
A small white arrow was poking ineffectually at the other side of the green rectangle, getting a lot of attention from the green gunners. Bill couldn't tell if any of the volunteers were still alive, because Captain Kadaffi's remote control wasn't concerned with that. The little box just kept the suits in formation so they could be blasted more easily. The captain might not even have been paying attention, as long as that arrow stayed neat and pointed in the right direction and someone was shooting someone else. Anyone, shooting anyone else.
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.

CHAPTER 3

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.