Free Bill 7 - the Galactic Hero by Harry Harrison Page A

attack most of the time.
    It was tense. It was exhausting. It was mind-boggling. But it wasn't interesting.
    It only became interesting a little after lunchtime.
    Bill had gotten adept at picking off single incoming planes or Missiles. Two at a time was no longer a challenge. Three at a time was enough to require some concentration. Four at a time was beginning to get difficult. Above five, and he needed help from the nose gunner on the ship behind the Heavenly Peace. At this precise moment, there were five manned fighters and six missiles highlighted in red on Bill's screen.
    Bill fired a heat-seeking missile into the pack and hoped for the best. A smart missile caught a fighter, just as the heat-seeker took a missile. Bill switched to the lasers. He swept them through the incoming pack and blew up three more, plus one of his own escort fighters. The gunner on the ship behind got two fighters before he developed more pressing concerns of his own.
    Another heat-seeking missile blew up another fighter. Bill fired yet another before he knew what the first had done. Then he switched back to the lasers and touched off a missile before it could reach him. The last heat-seeking missile caught the last fighter.
    Nailing ten incoming targets at once was pretty good. Bill knew it was a personal best, and thought it might be a record of some sort.
    Unfortunately, it wasn't quite good enough. Bill had intercepted ten, but there had been eleven, and that last missile found one of the small and vulnerable spots on the Heavenly Peace.
    There was a great explosion and the ship went into a steep dive. Alarms went off, even more of them and louder than reveille. The safety harness and the catheter tightened up, cutting off Bill's breathing and nearly cutting off small but important pieces of his body. His video display went solid red. Electric blue letters flashed, PREPARE TO DIE! PREPARE TO DIE! PREPARE TO DIE! WE'RE GOING DOWN! PREPARE TO DIE!
    A small window — the one that Bill had started to think of as the general's private window — opened in the screen. "I'd like to thank the whole crew for all your effort in our great endeavor. I'd particularly like to thank you for making me look so good. I only wish it were possible now, in the moment of your greatest trial, for me to be with you. However, the Heavenly Peace has been shot down, and I am much too important to the war effort to be captured or killed.
    "So I am leaving in my command pod. But I wish you every success in getting to the surface alive. If you are captured, which you surely will be if you aren't killed in the crash, please remember that you are expected to die under torture before telling them anything at all. Not that you know anything useful, but it is the principle that is important.
    "Remember that you will all be eligible for citations, as long as you die under torture. If you survive, of course, you will be eligible for court martials followed by execution as deserters.
    “Good luck, and gods bless.”
    It was a stirring and touching speech, especially compared to Captain Kadaffi's farewell to the troops.
    The music to the well-known hymn, Nearer, Whichever Deity Applies to Thee, welled up, and the words scrolled across the bottom of the screen. A beautiful picture of the sky filled the rest of the screen, punctuated by General Weissearse's private cabin-cum-escape-capsule lifting itself to safety.
    Once more, Bill prepared to die.

CHAPTER 8
    All Bill could do was hold on for the ride.
    It was a pretty good ride, if it wasn't going to end with a crash, with loops and swoops and turns and dives and an extraordinary variety of bumps and sudden turns. The pilot managed to find an instant to turn off the klaxons, but there was no way to shut down the hymns. So the deadly dive was accompanied all the way down by pious and mournful music.
    Bill tried singing along to the music, but he didn't know any of the official Imperial non-denominational hymns. He only remembered