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

"Move your fat bowby body," he bellowed.
Brickwall laughed in a most insulting manner.
"Your mother wears combat boots!" Bill sneered sneeringly.
Brickwall blinked. "Of course!" he foamed indignantly. "She's a Trooper. What else should she wear?"
"Your teeth look stupid!" Bill screamed in desperation. "Rabbits are full of bowb — and who's afraid of
rodent vegetarians?"
Brickwall gnashed the offenders at Bill.
Diplomacy wasn't working either.
"Ehhhh, what's up, Bill?"
"Be a buddy, Buddy," Bill burbled. In a sudden spasm of desperation he flung himself to the ground and
grappled his arms around the sergeant's knees. "Please don't make me go back in there. There's an officer
in the barracks. Something awful is sure to happen." But even this pathetic appeal didn't help.
"Sorry, Bill, but you know the rules: cover your ass. If I let anyone out I have to go in myself. You can't
forget the Trooper's code."
Indeed Bill could not. It was ingrained in them all, from the rawest recruit to the most senior non-com:
hypnotically drilled into their brains.
Every week is bowb-your-buddy week.
"It's been nice knowing you, Bill. Can I have your fangs when you get killed?"
Bill was too depressed even to answer this routine request. He hauled himself to his feet, made a quick
feint to see if he could get past the sergeant, bounced back well crunched, then plodded gloomily back
into the barracks. This was a depressing place at the best of times, carefully designed by the emperor's
sister-in-law in colors guaranteed to keep morale at a steady low level and the stomach at the point of
regurgitation. Now not even Bill's collection of feet could cheer him up.
And it only got worse. The officer who had come in was a short, scrawny man, flanked by six tall,
extraordinary-proportioned female bodyguards. This could be none other than Captain Kadaffi, hero of
the Emperor's Own Household Commandos. He had survived dozens of battles, scores of raids behind
enemy lines, and countless assassination attempts by his own Troopers. He was known and admired,
only by other officers of course, for his willingness to stay in a battle to the very end, until the last
enlisted men had been killed.
The enlisted men didn't admire that part so much, but their opinions didn't count. They were the ones
who had tried to assassinate him, after all. They even tried to take him out when he was lecturing them,
the motto being "a frag in class may save your ass."
The bodyguards formed up in a semicircle around Kadaffi, flaunting guns and blasters at the ready. The
captain struck a pose that was only slightly less macho than that of the women. "I need volunteers!" he
squeaked with officerial authority.
Bill and the other Troopers shuffled their feet and tried to back away. The bodyguards' blasters twitched
and there were a few warning shots fired into the barracks ceiling.
"I need twenty red-blooded heroes! Now is there anyone here who doesn't have red blood?" The
Troopers tried to come up with a good answer to that one, but Kadaffi didn't give them time. "Right —
you all volunteer."
The officer wheeled and disappeared behind the bodyguards. The biggest of them, a redhead of

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terrifying voluptuousness, stepped forward and covered the men. "Grab your gear and fall in. Now!" She
punctuated the order by flirtatiously firing a few rounds into the floor at Bill's feet.
"Hey," he protested, "that's one of my best feet!"
"You won't need it where you're going. You won't need it at all after tonight. Too bad, too. That's a
kinda' sexy foot, buster."