CHAPTER 79
Best. Birthday. Ever.
The king’s huge wedding at Buckingham Palace drowned out his own, smaller wedding on an uninhabited island off England’s coast. Having his wedding a week after the king’s made Billy feel safe. While royalty from across Europe flooded England to witness history, only a few dozen relatives saw Billy and the twins get married. Wanting to make the new queen as popular as possible, Billy imported kegs of alcohol and tons of food which he distributed free in Susan’s name. The hundreds of infrastructure projects, hospitals, and schools that he funded propelled the English and Irish economies like super wands. Billy’s growing fleet couldn’t keep up with demand, no matter how many shipyards they started.
Princess looked stunning in her white dress. He had never seen someone so happy cry so much. She made Emily her bridesmaid, and the two bonded like incestuous sisters. William loudly and repeatedly volunteered to be his best man, the little shit, knowing Billy had already asked Jack to have that honor. The little monster loved attention, and soon became the life of the party. William tried to make everyone like him, and collected jokes like other quads collected porn.
I’m gonna be a grandpa as soon as that bastard touches puberty, Billy realized.
In contrast to his dreamy wedding, Billy’s honeymoon was a nightmare. So long between transferring wands gave him the shakes, which affected his performance, which pissed off the ladies impatient to get pregnant. A lot of dangerous women with nothing to do but gossip was a unique hell that Billy became eager to escape from.
Spring in Siberia couldn’t come fast enough.
Billy found fifty thousand marathoners in Anchorage desperate to kill someone. Over half were Americans, and the rest split between Europeans and Asians thirsty for revenge. Grandma had been flying their units hard -- telling them it was to maximize their endurance, but really to keep them from shooting each other. Billy wondered how they’d fare after the war ended.
Bear took Billy aside, bubbling with excitement. He had never seen the old veteran look so content.
“You finally got laid!” was Billy’s first guess.
Bear projected a video of a laughing baby. “Isn’t he beautiful?”
Beautiful was -- honestly -- not the first thing that came to mind. Furry, maybe. “If you’re into little boys, yeah, he’s cute.”
“Mongols killed every family I’ve ever started -- three wives and seventeen children, so I never expected another family. I haven’t reproduced in a century. You remember the three brothers you dueled in Barcelona? They killed my last wife and kids over what they thought was my dead body. You gave me the wands that nearly destroyed me, and I’ve been killing Mongols with them ever since. So I no longer fear Mongols slaughtering those I love. Then I met this really great girl…”
Billy lit up like a fireball. “Congratulations! Are you calling him Bear Jr.?”
Bear must be projecting an invisible shield because Billy’s quips just bounced off him.
“We’re calling him Ralph, for now, but…”
Billy’s laugh interrupted him. “Ralph? Really?” He studied his friend. “Oh, no! Is Ralph your real name?”
“Lower your voice!” Bear had never yelled at him before. “The new guys aren’t gonna respect a guy named Ralph. Much less let me get away with so many jokes.”
“So why burden your only child with that name?”
Bear suddenly looked sheepish. “I was hoping we could name him after you.”
Billy fell backwards. He had never been floored before. Or, in this case, grounded. His butt landed on a rock and he squealed like an anal virgin. He was about to joke that his name was also Ralph, but Bear looked so vulnerable. Billy got up, still dizzy from being so flattered. He looked around to make sure nobody could overhear.
“Billy.”
Bear had been staring at him hard. First his eyes started laughing, then his face began chuckling, and finally his whole body roared with mirth.
“I’d rather call him Ralph,” Bear said with a straight face.
“No, please, no!” Billy felt like he was begging for his first blowjob. “Ralph is a terrible name. You know that better than most.” Bear did not look convinced, although his eyes twinkled more than usual. “Hey, one day everyone will know my real name, and the world will have an armada of Billy’s. Yours can be first.” Bear was proving a tough sell. Billy was not sure who was doing who the favor. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll make a video praising everything you’ve done. Your son will know that the Red Baron thinks you’re a hero. That must be worth something.”
Bear couldn’t hold it any longer. He burst out laughing and hugged his skinny friend.
“I’ve never felt towards any man what I feel for you, Billy.”
“I’m drawing the line at hugs. Don’t you dare kiss me, Ralph!”
But Bear saved the best for last. “I’ve been thinking how best to thank you for giving me enough hope to start another family. I’m a husband and father again because of you. I’d have been miserable until death without you. I forgot what happiness felt like.”
Billy looked behind him because he sure as hell felt an ambush coming.
“Did you know the world population peaked the year Genghis Khan invaded China? Earth would have half a billion more people today if the Mongols didn’t start this world war.
“Or that this year will set a new world record for babies born? Europe and the Americas are popping kids out at twice their historical rate. Not only was the war indirectly killing a million civilians a year, but millions more were not being born because people like me felt too insecure. American University put out a report estimating the world will set a new population record within several years, meaning every dead Mongol will be replaced with a live non-Mongol. All those new governments are taking a census, for tax purposes, so I’ve hired a team of university professors to document the change in population projections. Every year they’ll publish the latest numbers -- oh, I used to teach math.
“Right now people associate you with war, but every year I’m gonna remind them that you’ve helped create far more life than death.” Bear suddenly radiated intensity. “I want an entire generation to grow up knowing that most of them have you to thank for their existence.”
Overwhelmed, Billy almost fell on his ass again. “I feel so virile.”
“You’re welcome.”
Bear walked off like he owned the planet, while Billy applied a wand to his butt. It really hurt.
Team Red landed at night at a new secret base north of the Bering Strait. They slept all day and took off at dusk. Patrols soon shrieked alarms, which gave them the opportunity to bomb quads forming in the dark. They fought long enough for the enemy to get a good estimate of their numbers. Then Billy led them straight south because -- even in the summer -- northern Siberia is really cold. They slept all day, waiting for the enemy to catch up.
And Billy got his first surprise when sentries reported that the enemy did not pursue him. Which really pissed him off. Now was a terrible time for the enemy to become unpredictable.
“I didn’t want them in my rear,” Billy complained. “What if we have to cross the Strait in a hurry? Or we arrive too tired to outrun them?”
“They know they can’t catch us, so they didn’t even try,” Bear reasoned. “Or they stayed to block our other quads.”
Billy shook his head. “No, after what I did to his Indian marathoners, Genghis simply told them to contest every crossing. Crap. This ruins my plans for the Olympics.” He called a leadership meeting. “Grandma, get as close as safely possible to their west. Sleep all day, then attack them all night long to exhaust them. I doubt they’ll sleep much tonight, so you’ll have an energy advantage.
“Meanwhile, I’ll return to Alaska and give the near-marathoners the day shift since they need light to target their bombs. We’ll take days and you have nights until we eliminate them.
”
The battle played out as Billy expected, but it surprised him to learn that half of the Mongols were two-wanders, and all of them volunteers. Two-wanders can fight within tunnels just as well as marathoners. Since cleaning out bunkers was dangerous, Billy assigned it to his half-marathoners and sent his near-marathoners down the Manchurian coast to clear it of people while he drew Mongols forces elsewhere.
It shocked Billy that Genghis abandoned Siberia. They saw literally no one except the Siberians who he had asked to fish and hunt for them. It bothered him that Genghis did not chase him. Billy wanted to beat Mongol armadas like he always had: exhaust and ambush. The change in tactics worried him so much that he left his force at several lakes while he sent scouts to fan out far ahead. Billy himself went to the nearest city.
Instead of hidden armadas, Billy saw sentries on mountains and hilltops near huge piles of wood to ignite when they saw the Americans. No doubt they had several great hiding places nearby. It wasn’t until he saw Ulaanbaatar that he spotted battalions hiding in forests and ravines. A lot of them. He circled around and found even more south of the city.
Dressed as a Mongol civilian, he entered the city and found a fortress. Everyone who didn’t want to fight apparently left because they all seemed eager for battle. They already disassembled the most flammable structures and built hundreds of underground bunkers and stone buildings for the two-wanders to fight from. Everything around the banks looked like kill zones. Food seemed widely distributed, he saw water barrels everywhere, and safely assumed that they kept little wealth here.
Genghis took all the fun out of sacking cities.
Billy put himself in the Khan’s boots and everything suddenly made sense. The Mongols couldn’t catch marathoners, except sleeping near their targets, so that’s where they deployed their troops. He didn’t see any crops, so the Mongols only planted what they could harvest before the raiders got here. He saw few horses, mules, or oxen, so they probably drove them south as well.
Genghis planned on using hunger to force them to leave. If it worked, then the Americans would never return. Billy respected the move. What he didn’t know was how to counter it. He couldn’t even besiege them because they had more food. Since he didn’t even have bombs, it could take weeks to finish off each city. They had already run out of the supplies they brought from Alaska. Instead of returning north to his troops, Billy flew south until he found what he was looking for: food.
Instead of storing food within the cities, they hid it a few hours south, in the middle of nowhere, so the Americans couldn’t find it.
Nobody ever said Mongols were dumb. Genghis weighed the pros and cons of each force and developed tactics accordingly. The Mongols won as long as they didn’t lose. It was Billy who needed victories to justify taking so many so far for so long. It wasn’t until he thought of his father that the answer came to him. And the answer had him laughing all the way to his troops.
Billy led Team Red south, but carefully avoided the cities like the plague. Instead they went to the border separating Mongolia and China and found the support camps keeping the troops in Mongolia fed. There they found the civilians, herds, and harvested crops. With the vast Gobi Desert to the south and Korea to the east, those in eastern Mongolia literally had nowhere else to go.
Genghis assumed the Baron wanted to sack Mongol cities, which is what he would have done. But, instead, Billy’s goal was to kill Mongols. And that’s so much easier when they have sent their quads elsewhere.
Team Red fell upon the defenseless civilians just as Mongols for centuries wiped out American civilians. Billy fouled watering holes within the desert and destroyed everything of value. They found little gold, so they carried food. Instead of flying fast and far, they spread out as wide as possible along the border. The towns in northern China seemed to have more Mongols than Chinese, so they let the Chinese leave before burning those towns and everyone in them. They created a path of destruction about one thousand kilometers wide. Once west of the Gobi, they raided even wider. The cities they sacked acted as supply bases rather than forts.
Genghis finally showed up with a quarter-million quads. Billy rotated his highest-flying battalions to blast them during the day, while the rest rotated lightning strikes at night. Genghis suffered several times as many casualties simply because Billy had better fliers. Genghis retaliated by sending battalions on suicide attacks on Billy’s camp to catch those resting. Team Red continued west, destroying everything within range, and occasionally doubling back to hit the Khan’s camp at night.
What he didn’t do was attack the cities that spent a year preparing for him. Instead, they destroyed the people, roads, and supplies that kept those cities alive to make them wither on the vine.
While Team Red lured Genghis west, Billy flew to Korea where his one hundred fifty thousand near-marathoners waited for him. Guides led them to their fleet, anchored equidistant between Korea and Shanghai, the port city that divided China from the Empire. They crossed the sea one division at a time, resting on an uninhabited island where their ships provided them with tents, blankets, stoves, food, and potable water.
The Mongols did not accept the Yangtze River as their new border, or even China as an independent nation, so both sides struck each other constantly. Which made President Zhu very receptive to a message from the Red Baron to meet him in Shanghai. It not only surprised Zhu when the Baron actually showed up, but shocked him to learn that one hundred fifty American battalions wanted to attack Mongol units. Zhu did his part by ordering a brief attack all along the border. When the Mongols retaliated in force, the Americans fell upon them from behind, after first destroying their bases.
The near-marathoners then sacked and pillaged everything within three hundred clicks of the coast, targeting everyone who looked Mongolian, but letting the rest live. They stole every ship that looked seaworthy to transport their valuables. They started in the south so that they could raid north, closer to home. By the time Genghis heard the Baron led troops within northern China, Billy had already looted the area around Peking and soon disappeared into Manchuria. The Baron left a video explaining he didn’t burn Peking because he wanted everyone to see him duel the Immortal.
When Team Red got the news, they had already accumulated as much wealth as they could carry, and so went home. The Europeans continued west, the Asians southeast, and the Americans hugged Siberia until they crossed into Alaska.
Billy spent the next several months traveling Asia to reproduce with the mothers of his children, give speeches, and advise governments. Kings still threatened war, rebels still threatened revolution, and everyone had a grievance. Billy wisely intervened as little as possible, other than to advise non-violent means to effect change.
On Hainan Island, Billy met with Kung-ti, whose grandson Zhu the Chinese elected as the first president of the Republic of China. The fat man hugged Billy like a son. It felt like being thrown into a large vat of leftover soup.
“You scared us, you know?” he told Billy. “The Khan stabbed deep into our territory like a hot knife. A nation of butter would have resisted him more. Then you destroyed his follow-on force. Even better were the videos. Before that, they had great morale while we were depressed. Your videos reversed that. Your victory gave us the confidence to bomb the Mongols to hell, wounding Genghis Khan himself. You wanted democracy instead of another dictatorship, so I held elections to capitalize on Zhu’s new popularity.”
“Would you like to retake the rest of China?” Billy asked lightly, watching the greedy bastard squirm. “If I kill Genghis and destroy his largest air units, would the Republic of China send everything they have north? I’ll have a quarter-million marathoners and half a million Americans. I’m willing to bribe Korea, Japan, Taiwan, India, Persia, and Europe into helping you.”
The old man’s eyes twinkled. “We Chinese will never feel safe as long as the Empire threatens our border
. Most of the Chinese quads who fled with stolen loot have since resettled in our territory, while few Chinese still serve in the Mongol Air Force. We now have over a million quads in our air force and militias.”
Billy took that as a yes. “I’m distributing videos urging Asians -- not just Chinese -- to kill Mongols after I’ve killed The Immortal. You could help by handing out the wands I brought, and maybe giving away spears, swords, and arrows. Genghis will have to devote more quads to basic security, leaving him fewer to chase me.”
The governor was too excited -- or heavy -- to continue standing. He fell into a chair to think through the consequences. “But how will we know the Khan is dead?”
“Post sentries around the Peking Stadium. When they see him die, ring monastery bells. Have your men stand by every bell in every city to spread the word.”
“That’s it?” Kung-ti asked.
Billy paused dramatically. “Well, there is one more thing you can do in return for getting northern China. Out of all the people in the world, I trust you the most to do this.”
Billy leaned closer and whispered into his ear so that not even their bodyguards could overhear.
Kung-ti looked like the Buddha after a satisfying fart. "You are such a clever bastard. You have come to the right person. I shall personally see to it."
That winter was the longest of Billy’s life. To reduce how many wands he sucked, he blasted bedrock and flew constantly. Princess seemed desperate for him to impregnate as many quads as possible -- as if the world would need them in twenty years.
The next spring, Billy led his American marathoners and near-marathoners to the southern end of the Ural Mountain Range, where they met one hundred European and Indian marathon battalions that he borrowed for the summer. Ivan the Terrible stockpiled tons of food, bombs, and supplies at a dozen hidden locations near their targets. More importantly, Siberians and Russians drove herds east to make sure they wouldn’t starve, while many of the near-marathoners worked as supply mules.
With a quarter-million long-distance quads, Billy sacked the cities he avoided the year before. When Genghis approached with a million troops, Billy simply sacked cities in the opposite direction, forcing Genghis to chase him. Once tired enough, Billy would attack at night, then backtrack them to eat up the Khan’s supply train. Billy evaded the armada to concentrate on easier prey. Whenever Genghis got too close, Billy would strike hard and then fly away to burn more cities.
With Genghis in western Mongolia, Grandma led Team Red and three hundred thousand half-marathoners from Alaska, down Siberia, to strike what was left in Manchuria and eastern Mongolia. They swept everything within several hundred clicks of the coast. A supply fleet sailed parallel so they ate something other than fish and rabbits. In Korea they picked up one hundred thousand Asian marathoners eager to kill Mongols and take their stuff. Having pre-deployed bombs all winter, they overwhelmed the cities that defied them the previous summer.
William’s dream finally came true: no one lived in Mongolia.
With summer ending, both forces in western Mongolia struggled to feed themselves, but Billy had fewer mouths and longer legs. Billy pretended to send his Americans home, when really they just went to Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest lake, to fish it out. Billy led the European marathoners west, to their last stashes of food. Genghis took the opportunity to try to catch him while he had them out-numbered. He pushed his troops and stretched his supplies, since he could no more live off the land than the raiders.
Billy stayed just out of reach until his one hundred fifty American battalions surprised the Mongols from behind, after overwhelming the slower Mongols that Genghis left behind. No sooner did Genghis organize his armada to face the new threat than Billy attacked as well. Team Red rotated divisions to exhaust the hungry Mongols, until Genghis wisely fled with only one hundred thousand troops. Billy sent the Americans home before winter started and chased the Mongols down with the Europeans until the enemy scattered.
Only for a Persian to stab Billy in the back. Even pregnant, Princess caught him before he dove a kilometer and divided her time between healing her husband and torturing the traitor. The fool didn’t erase his wand memories, which led them to several others back home who soon perished, along with his family.
What Billy hated even more than getting stabbed again was being unable to move for a week. Nobody could even carry him to safety if Mongols attacked.
“You apparently killed a lot of his family,” Princess explained the next morning. “But he hated Mongols even more than you because they suppressed his people while you set them free. He understood why you killed his pro-Mongolian family members, but his honor code still demanded he avenge them.”
Billy survived two assassination attempts the previous summer, but this one nearly killed him. To keep the Mongols away and to enrich his European marathoners, Billy had them loot northern China. Weighing them down with wealth was a surefire way to keep his followers following. Plus, the less money Genghis had, the fewer mercenaries he’d hire.
Because they both knew that the Olympics would be more than just an historic duel.