Part 18 (1/2)

”There's a new s.h.i.+pment of recruits comin' in about right now! You must be the one who will work them over?”

Bill grunted again, a pig imitation he usually enjoyed. So that's what he was doing tomorrow. He pushed his shot gla.s.s out for another drink.

”Say, aren't you drinking a little too much if you have to get up at four in the morning?” the bartender pointed out.

”Puts me in the proper s.a.d.i.s.tic mood. Fill the gla.s.s and shut up,” he smiled.

The bartender shrugged. ”Here you go, pal. This one's on the house. You look like you just lost your woman to your best buddy!”

Bill's eyes shot wide. The shot-gla.s.s spilled as he leaned over, grabbed the man by his s.h.i.+rt and pulled him halfway across the bar. ”What? Does every bowbing Trooper know?”

”Gasp!” the barman gasped, slowly expiring. Bill's grasp loosened a bit and he sucked in reviving, though foul, air. ”Stop! I don't know diddly-bowb about you! Sorry, I must have hit the nail on the head! Look, be my guest, keep the whole bottle!”

Bill grunted and let the guy go. ”Her name was Irma. And she was the nova in my galaxy!” He shook his head and poured the whiskey and just stared at it for a moment. ”But all good things pa.s.s and the end of a lovelorn Trooper is always a tragedy. She left me, Rick, it was Dumpsville for good old Bill, bad-karma gravity-hole of the universe!”

”Gee, Bill. Sorry to hear about it!”

The ”Gee” earned the bartender serious scrutiny by Bill. No, there was no seam on his head, so he wasn't a disguised Chinger. Besides, Bgr the Chinger had stolen a lifeboat and escaped not long after they'd dimension jumped out of the Over-Gland. They never had found the fabled Over-Brewery, either. But they had drunk all the booze in the s.h.i.+p, which, by hindsight, had been Bill's downfall. Rick had found Irma more attractive than the booze, which certainly must have endeared her more to him than the unconscious and sozzled Bill. At least he guessed that's what had happened.

All he knew was that he had woken up back on Colostomy IV, a note of regret pinned to his tunic and the MP's just approaching with houndlike bays of success.

And that, as the obvious but oft repeated aphorism stated, was that. There was a shortage of Drill Instructors; the last one had been eaten alive by the recruits. So they s.h.i.+pped him here to Camp Brezhnev, double-time, to grind the new recruits through the boot camp meat grinder and kill off the chaff.

He couldn't help now but remember, as he killed what few remaining bacteria were left in his stomach with another swig of Olde Paint Remover, what Bgr the Chinger had said in his note that Bill had found stuffed in his ear the morning after the little guy had split.

”Sorry about the misadventures and such and any trouble I might have caused by tying up with that fruitcake of a doctor. All I wanted was a kinder, gentler universe. As, I a.s.sume, do we all, with the exception of the military. Signed Your Chinger pal, Bgr.”

What bowb.

”The Chingers are our enemies!” he mouthed incoherently at the bartender.

”Yeah, pal. They sure are.”

”Loose lips sink drips!”