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

"You are a new gunner, TROOPER BILL," said the animated General. "Do you want a training session?"
"Sure," said Bill.
The screen ignored him again. "Press the red button for live fire, or the black button for training," it said.
Bill thumbed the black button.
"Deposit a coin now," directed the computerized Weissearse. A digital clock materialized beside him and started ticking down from ten seconds.
With combat-trained reflexes, Bill reached down to the coin dispenser in his Swiss Army Foot and pulled out a quarter-credit coin. As he expected, the slot was just below the screen. He got the coin in with four seconds to spare.
A list of targets and point values lit up the screen, with a picture of each type of target. They ranged from one point for a single enemy soldier up to a million points for a little man with black hair, a bushy moustache, and a very bad complexion. The little man was labeled ENEMY LEADER. EXTRA TIME AT 500,000 POINTS scrolled across the bottom.
Somewhere, as though from a great distance (although nothing here was more than six feet away), Bill thought he heard a choir singing "The Trooper's Hymn," but he shook his head and it went away.
The image of General Weissearse returned, holding a pointer and standing in front of a chart. "The black button, marked STRAFE, will destroy little things." He indicated pictures of a soldier, a tent, and a tank, and each one blew up in turn. "The red button, marked BOMB, will blow up big things." He pointed to pictures of a bridge, a building, and a battleship, and again each one blew up. "There is one exception." The ENEMY LEADER appeared on the chart. "You must use the BOMB to get the points for the ENEMY LEADER. Otherwise it looks as though you were trying to kill him, and you get no points.
"Press the black button when you are ready to begin."
Fortunately for Bill, there was a change machine in the gun turret. When he ran out of quarters, he could get more without having to leave the turret, and have the amount deducted directly from his pay. Since he couldn't get a drink and no one wanted to talk to him, he spent the rest of the trip to Eyerack trying to get his name into the TAIL GUNNER! Hall of Fame.

CHAPTER 5

In some ways this was the best duty Bill had ever pulled. People left him alone, he had nothing to do but play video games all day long, and no one was trying to kill him. On the other hand, he was sober all of the time, and there was nothing even remotely female on board the Heavenly Peace, not even the ship's cat - an evil-looking tomcat with only one eye and ears scarred and torn by the spacerats that it hunted through the bilges. But at least for the moment no one was trying to kill him, which made up for a lot.
General Weissearse showed up in a live broadcast to the gun turret a few times, and Bill had to listen to the man pray and preach, but even that was tolerable once Bill realized he didn't have to stay awake for any of it. And the general kept saying, until Bill believed it, that this would be a safe battle. He wouldn't even have to attack any people, only guns and buildings that wouldn't fight back.
Bill did kind of regret that he couldn't get all of a million points for ENEMY LEADER, because in the Live Fire mode a million points was exactly what you had to get to win a twelve-hour pass. But he also had learned from the game that ENEMY LEADER types were usually surrounded by other types carrying guns and missiles and weapons of all sorts. And these types got offended if you tried to kill their leader. By and large, Bill had gone out of his way for years to avoid offending people with lots of weapons.
So when the real General interrupted the computer-animated general to tell Bill that they were in orbit around Eyerack, and had been so for two weeks hoping that the Eyerackians would see the error of their ways, Bill didn't immediately start pleading for his life. He didn't even try to remember any of his boyhood prayers. He just wondered if he could afford enough quarters to finish the battle.
He squandered one of them in the second slot he'd found under the screen. The chair tilted back and started to vibrate, and in an instant Bill was asleep.
He dreamt of home, of his mother and his robo-mule and the great house with the white columns in front, of the cheerful midgets who came to play and sing in the yard as he marched down the road, paved in yellow brick, that led to the recruiting office. Somewhere deep in his subconscious he knew that the farm hadn't been anything like that, but it had been so long that he wasn't really sure any more.
Then he dreamt of his kindly old school mistress, Ms. Phlogiston, who had helped him to start taking his correspondence courses in Technical Fertilizer Operation, courses that he would now never finish. She told him, in his dream, "You must always be ready, Bill, to take advantage of whatever opportunities present themselves. And in order to do that, you must plan carefully. Every great venture must have a plan, you know." But why was Ms. Phlogiston wearing a muumuu? And why was she yelling at Bill?
"Bill! Bill! Hallelujah, son, it's time to wake up!"
It gradually came to Bill that it wasn't Ms. Phlogiston yelling at him, it was General Weissearse. Reflexively, his eyes popped open and his two right hands saluted. "Yes sir! Yes sir! Three bags full, sir!"
"Praise the Lord, son! No, no, that's not an order. But wake up, Bill, we're about to go into glorious battle against the godless heathen who are threatening the very basis of our civilization, who are attempting to undermine the moral and religious principles that are the core of the Empire and of all humanity, who are an embodiment of evil unknown since the days of fabled Earth itself..."
Bill's eyes started to close again.
"...destroy the enemy in our midst in order to destroy the atheistic Chingers..."
His eyes closed fully, and his breathing got deeper and steadier.
"...the glories of heaven to our victorious troops..."
The next thing Bill knew, the general was shouting at him again through the video screen.
"Wake up, Bill! As I was saying, only through your eternal vigilance, and the Lord's hand on your guidance and targeting computer, can we save the galaxy from atheistic totalitarianism."
Automatically, Bill said, "Yes, sir," but he did wonder idly how atheistic totalitarianism differed from being in the Space Troopers. Probably had fewer chaplains. But of course, the Chingers and the Eyerackians didn't believe in the Emperor, the hand of whose own, personal, stand-in Bill had once slobbered over, when he was getting his medal that certified him as an official Galactic Hero. That kind of personal contact tended to reinforce a naive farm boy's loyalty, and Bill had always been intensely loyal to the Emperor, even if he couldn't quite remember the Emperor's name.
While Bill was thinking about all this, General Weissearse finished his pep talk. "So, Tail Gunner Bill, are you ready to go?"
"Yes, sir. I've been practicing for weeks."
"Excellent! Remember, we're not actually going to be killing any people in this attack, because all human life is sacred, even that of godless traitors who deserve to be tortured to death. Just blow up the buildings that are marked in red on your screen.
"And here's a little something to show my confidence in you. We attack in five minutes. The Lord, the Emperor, and I are all counting on you. Good luck and God bless!"
The general disappeared from the video display before Bill could react. Bill was more interested in what was happening at the change machine anyway. Coins were pouring out of it, and its display was blinking NO CHARGE! NO CHARGE! NO CHARGE! Five credits worth of quarters! Bill wiped away a tear at this sign of his commander's faith in him.
He gathered the fallen coins and stacked them neatly on the little shelf above the controls. The first coin went into the slot, and for the first time Bill pressed the red button for live fire.
The target screen wasn't the same as the one he'd been training on, but that was fine. Bill had learned to expect surprises in combat.
The Heavenly Peace's artificial gravity held everything steady, but Bill's chair swiveled and swooped and twisted so he could get fully nauseated by the dive through the atmosphere toward the Eyerackian defenses.
There! A small dot on the screen glowed red! All that time and all those quarters spent in training were not wasted. Bill waited until he was in range, then launched a smart missile.
They were called smart missiles, but in fact they were even dumber as Bill himself, which was pretty dumb. It wasn't enough to show them the target; Bill had to steer them in to the target by the TV pictures they sent back from their nose cameras. The experience was very much like a roller coaster ride in which you got blown up at the end, or like being a commando, except that you didn't actually die.
There were explosions all around, but Bill ignored them. He concentrated on guiding his missile straight into the gun emplacement. At the last second, he could see the Eyerackian gunners running away from their posts, and then the screen went blank. At the top, it said GUN EMPLACEMENT: 50 POINTS, and the score total went to 50, and then there was another dot of red set up for him.
The great battle had begun.

CHAPTER 6

It was not the mother of all battles. But at least it was the second cousin, twice removed, of all battles.
The Heavenly Peace was the scout and command ship for the great assault, and teeniest vessel in the armada. The General's ship had barely enough firepower to destroy a planet. But it led the greatest armed force ever assembled since the last one, in February. Millions of heroic troopers aboard thousands of gallant ships displayed their heroism by dropping bombs from a very great distance. And behind all this great venture lay a single only partially unhinged mind, the dominating intelligence of General Wormwood Weissearse.
The Emperor had said, "Go, thou, and return unto me my straying sheep of Eyerack," and the General had leaped into action with a brilliant plan, glazed eyeballs and organizational genius.
Well, that wasn't exactly how it happened. It was really like one aide whispered the news from Eyerack into one of the Emperor's ears, the ear that was slightly less deaf, and the Emperor mumbled something and drooled significantly, and another aide, stationed a safe distance from the Imperial mouth, announced the Emperor's inspirational words and thoughts. The General's plan boiled down to "bomb 'em back to the Early Stone Age." And his organization consisted of saying to a bunch of officers, "Get your ships and come with me."