As if he was curious to see what would happen, Billiard stepped back, away from Goldaper. The Lorian revolutionary looked at him with stark terror in his eyes for several seconds, then tried to speak. A red froth bubbled through his mangled lips, spitting out from lungs pierced by broken ribs, and, against all hope, he turned and tried to move away from Billiard,
The former Mercenary did not need to move fast this time. Casually, as though he were reaching for a hanging jacket, he stretched out and grabbed Goldaper’s upper arm. Spinning the battered almost-corpse around, he released his grip on Goldaper’s arm, then wrapped fingers of steel around his throat. He seemed not to be exerting himself at all as he lifted Goldaper clear of the floor with one hand, strangling him in his grip. The Lorian’s legs kicked and his body spasmed as his tongue, swollen to twice normal size, protruded between battered lips. His arms swung in great sweeps, trying to reach Billiard, but there was no force in his swings. In seconds, his body gave one last great convulsion, and he was dead. Billiard dropped the corpse, looked around the room as if asking if there were any objections, then turned and walked out the door onto the parade field.
III
Admiral Koppett was in his office when Billiard arrived there, directed by Lieutenant Garth. Billiard knocked, then entered without waiting for a reply.
The admiral looked up at the newcomer, bland blue eyes protruding somewhat from a moon-shaped face to question who this was entering his office without permission.
“Colonel Billiard reporting, sir.” Not sure just what sort of military protocol was followed in this revolutionary navy, Billiard held himself at attention without saluting.
“Relax, Colonel,” Koppett said, smiling and extending his hand. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Billiard took the proffered hand, shook it, then stepped back, still standing at attention. “I’m afraid I have a bit of bad news, Admiral.”
“So soon?” Koppett asked, a slight frown replacing the politic, automatic smile that had been on his face since he’d learned the identity of his caller.
“I’m afraid I had to execute Colonel Goldaper, sir.”
“Goldaper? Execute? What the hell do you mean, Colonel?” There was incredulity in Koppett’s voice, but his expression showed only interest, not surprise.
“He challenged my authority almost immediately after landing, in front of the men. I had no choice.” Billiard’s voice was as devoid of emotion as his face had been during killing a few minutes earlier.
“So you shot him.”
“No, sir. I strangled him.” Again, there was absolutely no emotion in Billiard’s voice.
“Strangled him! God! You’re sure it was necessary?”
Koppett looked up at Billiard with an expression that said he knew how ridiculous the question was, but that it was one his role demanded.
“Admiral, you hired me—through Goldaper—to turn this bunch of disorganized people out there into an effective fighting force. I cannot do that if the first thing they see is a successful challenge to my authority.”
For the first time since he had entered the room, Billiard began to relax, some feeling coming into his voice as he determined that his execution of Goldaper was not going to result in his own immediate execution by Koppett.
“And you think that as long as they properly fear you, you’ll be able to turn them into an effective fighting force?” For the first time there was a trace of doubt in Koppett’s voice.
“No, Admiral,” Billiard answered, “I don’t. Fear of me may make them into an organized group, but it won’t make them into a fighting group. Respect for me as a fighting man will help… but not even that will do the whole job.”
“And what will?”
“Pride. Pride in themselves as fighting men. Pride in their cause. And pride in their leaders. You. And, of necessity, pride in me.”
“And with pride you think you can topple the Lorian Empire?”
“Admiral, give me men filled with pride and armed with the proper weapons, and I’ll topple the whole damn galaxy.”
THREE
I
At first Billiard thought of Lieutenant Garth as just another of those frustrated females found in the military services everywhere—both in this universe and in his own—who couldn’t make it in normal society, who for whatever reason could not find the security she needed there. She had let the military provide the security her psyche demanded, he thought, and at the same time she managed all the sex she needed from others in the service.
It did not take Billiard long, however, to discover he was wrong about this girl. No, he corrected himself, not ‘girl.’ Lieutenant Garth—Santha—was all woman, and a special woman at that. Once his fight with Goldaper and his meeting with Koppett were over, Billiard had time to pay attention to the others around him, and he immediately noted that there was something quite different about Lieutenant Santha Garth. He didn’t know, yet, exactly what that ‘something different’ was; but he was sure it was there, and sure that it was going to prove to be quite important to him.
After showing him to his quarters, Lieutenant Garth had disappeared, promising to return for him at about supper time. They then had eaten together in the Officer’s Mess and she had shown him around the camp, pointing out the classrooms, the concealed hangars for the combat boats, the heavily shielded power plant, the fuel-storage dump, and the armory. Somehow, Billiard wasn’t at all sure how, she had ended up back in his quarters with him, in his bed.
Now she lay quietly against him, her soft brown hair like a cobweb against his face, sometimes tickling his nose, sometimes arousing a feeling of tenderness Billiard could never recall having felt toward a woman before.
The windows of Billiard’s room were open, allowing the warm, almost tropical breeze to caress their bare bodies. In the distance some strange creature, probably not yet even cataloged in the botanical records on this planet, loosed a mournful cry. He listened to it and knew that never—not in his childhood, not in his days in the guild, not even in the too-brief period after his retirement from mercenary activity had he felt so relaxed and at peace, so at one with all life. He did not understand it. Moreover, he did not want to understand it, for fear understanding would somehow change things. He simply wanted to enjoy the feeling for however long it might last, before the nagging worry and crushing responsibility of his mission for Earth again reminded him that these were not his people, that Lorian revolution was not his cause, that this universe was not his home.
Standing on the small table next to the bed was a bottle of Netellian wine Billiard had brought with him from Zemaros. It was one of the few decent beverages he’d found since entering the Lorian Empire. He rolled over, refilled his glass from the open bottle, then offered it to the woman next to him. She shook her head, looked at him for a moment, then spoke in a sleepy voice.
“It’s late, and I’d best be getting back to my quarters.”
“But I don’t want you to go,” Billiard said with a tender smile. “I think I’m going to make you my executive officer and keep you right here.”
“In your bed?” she giggled. “I won’t be able to get much staff work done from here.”
“That depends on the kind of staff I have you working on, Lieutenant.”
“If you say things like that, you’re going to need a bodyguard, not an executive officer.”
“But the only body around here that needs guarding is yours—to make sure no one makes off with it in the middle of the night.”
Billiard reached across the bed to caress her shoulder, but she pulled away from him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, suddenly confused. “Did I do something wrong, say something I shouldn’t have?”
“No, nothing. Or nothing you said…” Santha answered in a small voice. “It’s what you were thinking.”
“What? All I was thinking about was you. What can be wrong with that?”
“I know you were thinking about me. And I know what you were
thinking: about how easy I am. A camp whore, right?” Billiard started to deny her assertion, but she continued before he had a chance to speak. “Well, you’re wrong! I’m not easy, and I’m not the camp whore. I’m an officer of the revolution, a combat-boat gunner, and a damned good one; and I’m very choosy about whose bed I share!”
Billiard looked at her, drained his glass of wine, and let the empty tumbler drop from his hand to the floor, not bothering to reach over and set it on the table.
“That was quite a speech,” he said quietly. “And maybe you’re right. Perhaps I’d better see you back to your quarters, so no one will think you’re bedding down with your new commanding officer for some ulterior motive.” He felt anger at the words, and guilty for saying them only to hurt her.
For a moment she did not answer, but just lay there looking at him in the dim light. Off in the distance the unknown animal again howled its mournful song into the night. When she did speak her voice was quiet but forceful, and Billiard knew she meant every word she said.
“I don’t want to go because I’m worried about what others might think. I’m only concerned with what you think. Because, silly as it might sound, I like you very much. More than I have liked anyone in a long, long time. But… but I had to be sure you knew what kind of person I am—and what kind I am not.”
“I understand,” he said, and he did. He couldn’t tell her of the feelings he had experienced since meeting her, for he did not understand them himself. “Who knows,” he continued, “this might be the start of something more than just a revolution.” He smiled at her and she smiled back. “As a matter of fact,” he said, suddenly serious, “I think something has already started for me…”
Santha pulled him toward her, then lifted her head and kissed him firmly. Honesty and warmth and giving were in that kiss. A want and a need, too, which Billiard was able to recognize without words. The Lieutenant had almost a fierceness in the way she came to him, a fire in her demands but with a generosity in her giving that he had never known before. No words of love passed between them now, no commitments were made, and none were needed. They had been lovers. They were friends, he knew that. More would come, but it would come in its own time. They had each other now and they had the patience of love. They could wait for whatever else might develop, sure in the knowledge that their ultimate destination was far in the future. Providing, of course, that Billiard could reach that destination without finding it necessary to sacrifice their future—or even Santha herself—to his real mission in this universe.
II
Billiard threw himself into his duties and was pleasantly surprised to find that he did not have as much training to supervise as he had thought he would. The men under his command already knew piloting and gunnery. All he had to teach them was discipline, teamwork, and tactics. And it wasn’t long before he found himself shuffling men around, demoting some, advancing others into command positions as they developed the ability to lead men.
Before long, with Admiral Koppett’s blessing, he was able to begin scheduling hit-and-run raids on the outlying systems of the Lorian Empire—raids led by Billiard himself. He always chose Lieutenant Garth as his gunner, not only because he wanted her near him, but because she had proved to be the best gunner in his small fleet, getting consistent hits in both space-to-space and space-to-ground gunnery practice.
Supplies captured on the hit-and-run raids began flowing into Sutet IX; and the more equipment Billiard had available to him, the more crews he was able to put into space. Within six months he had assembled a force large enough and well-enough trained to take on anything except a full fleet of the Lorian Navy with a chance of coming out on top. Billiard avoided all such confrontations with Lorian naval units, however, sticking to raids on undefended merchant ships and lightly defended planets.
His planetary raids served a secondary purpose, one which Billiard never bothered reporting to Admiral Koppett. While his ships were picking up supplies from raided outposts, men were slipping away from the revolutionary ships to mingle with the population of whatever planet they were “visiting”: men who had been recruited by Billiard for his own spy service, men who saw their duty as the gathering and transmitting of information on Lorian military matters in order to aid Billiard in deciding what outposts to hit, men whose secondary function was one they were not even aware of. They were helping locate for Billiard the research station that was holding Earth’s universe captive.
On what would have been Christmas Day, had Billiard been back in his own universe, a dual mission was scheduled. The commander was going to lead a strike deep into the Lorian Empire, deeper than they had ever penetrated before, just to show the God that no place in his empire was safe from the navy of the revolution.
The planet picked, Thopt, was one that was sparsely populated, not because of its late discovery or inclement climate but because Thopt was one of the few planets shared by human and Goromi. During the last war between the Lorian Empire and the Goromi amphibians, the latter had established a mining enclave on the planet, and the peace treaty ending the war had specified that the enclave was to remain under the complete control of the Goromi military. After their raid, on the way back out toward Sutet IX, it was planned that Billiard’s squadron would make a quick pass over Chandara III, a heavily settled planet with a very active underground. Each of Billiard’s combat boats was fitted with a belly-mount drop compartment full of supplies for the underground—mostly explosives, ammunition, and hand weapons. All were necessities for an underground movement involved in tying down military and Redhat forces that otherwise would have been out searching for the main revolutionary base.
Billiard almost scrubbed the dual mission before it started, simply because everything seemed to be going wrong. Two of his accompanying combat boats, on a test flight the day before to Sutet IX’s inner moon, collided in mid-flight. One made it back okay, but the crew of the other was not in pressure suits and was killed when their ship decompressed. No sooner had Billiard received word than he was notified that his ground crew would not have his own ship ready for action at the scheduled departure time. He fumed about this for a few minutes, then switched to a backup ship. At the last minute, his crew informed him that they’d got his ship ready, and he and Lieutenant Garth returned to it—only to find that the command identification radar wasn’t tracking. Not wanting to have to refigure all the launch and hi-drive numbers, Billiard decided to have the other boats use him as a reference point, hoping his squadron would not get scattered all over hell in the coming fight. By doing this, he wouldn’t need the command ID radar.
The start of the raid went exactly as planned. Billiard’s squadron popped out of hi-drive on the edge of the target system and drove in under full-normal space acceleration. Thopt had a large spaceport and repair facility in its southern hemisphere, but by the time Billiard’s squadron finished with it there wasn’t a building left standing at the repair base and the twenty-plus ships at the spaceport were just so much smoldering wreckage. But knocking out the spaceport and repair base had been only half of the job at this location. Next, Billiard’s men had to seek out and, hopefully, destroy the two squadrons of combat boats the Lorian Navy had in the system.
Billiard had just ordered his squadron to form up, prior to going out on an inner-system search patrol, when the enemy squadrons found them, still in the planet’s atmosphere.
Far in the lead and waiting for his other ships to join up, Billiard was the first to spot the Lorians, coming down fast on his gunnery radar. His hands, busy on the controls of the ship, appeared to be moving in a blur as he poured full power to the drive nodes and headed for space. At the same time, he thumbed the com link connecting him with the other ships of his command: “All ships, get a remote readout from my battle computer. I’ve got those bastards coming down. Let’s get up there and teach them a lesson or three.”
They were out of the atmosphere but not even close to orbital velocity when the battle started. But befor
e many seconds they were back in the atmosphere. The Lorian ships had come down from orbit at ballistic reentry speeds and had gone through Billiard’s squadron so fast that the battle computers in the revolutionary combat boats did not have a chance to select targets. The Lorian battle computers had been tracking them for several seconds, though, and by the time the enemy ships were past, Billiard’s squadron numbered two less.
It took only moments for Billiard’s ships to turn and give chase, since they were still moving at atmospheric speeds. Billiard lined up his boat behind an enemy ship; and Lieutenant Garth, her weapons board winking green as all systems were readied for combat, sent out a long burst of kill-torps. The line of air-turned-to-plasma stretched from the wing pods to the tail section of the enemy ship. A fraction of a second later, the enemy ship’s escape pod blew loose, just in time to save the crew of the exploding combat boat.
Billiard barely had time to turn and avoid the cloud of wreckage, when calls started coming in for assistance from other ships in his squadron. The fight had dropped lower into the atmosphere, far below Billiard’s current altitude, so he pointed the nose of his boat at the ground and threw in full thrust. A heavy cloud blanket loomed below, so Billiard, not having his command identification radar, was not sure just where the rest of his squadron was or where the battle was taking place. All he knew was that it was somewhere under him, and probably to the right, since that was the way the enemy ships had been traveling during their reentry.
The only revolutionary boat in sight was that of Captain Ellv, who had stuck with Billiard through the early stages of the fight. Now he held position off to one side and behind Billiard’s boat, out of the turbulence and heat from Billiard’s drive but close enough to provide protection should an enemy ship jump the commander while he was concentrating on downing someone else.
Through the Reality Warp Page 6