Retief and the Rascals (16 page)

            Faced with the problem of presenting multiple
arms, the troop broke up into a chaotic mob, haranguing each other and casting
resentful glances toward Hish.

            Hish recoiled, miming incomprehension by
allowing all five oculars to collapse limply across his narrow, cartilaginous
skull.

        "Are you quite mad,
Retief?" the general demanded.

            "Just a little," Retief conceded
"After all, you spoiled our show."

            "Regrettable, but necessary!" Hish
hissed. "But what has that to do with a simple soldier like myself, simply
carrying out his orders?"

            "The orders are changed," Retief told
him bluntly. "Call the sergeant over here."

            "A Groacian general officer hardly takes
orders from a Terry
Civilian!"
Hish announced "But I'm bigger
than you are, Hish," Retief reminded the officer, and simultaneously took
a careful grip on three of his limp eye-stalks.

            "Retief! You wouldn't!" Hish
complained. "Remember, eye-stalk-twist was covered in Article Two,
paragraph nine, line five, of the New Geneva Convention!" Retief gave the
oculars a tentative tug.

            "They seem firmly anchored," Retief
commented. "I wonder just
how
firmly." He applied a steady
pressure to the now frantically twitching organs. Hish went limp, but regained
his footing as he found himself supported by the members in Retief's grip.
"To let go!" the Groaci wailed. "Oh, Sergeant! To come over a
moment!" He folded a handy pair of tentacles and mimed impatience by erecting
his center eye-stalk and drumming the other free one on his cranium like a man
might drum his fingers to display boredom. The sergeant ordered his company to
parade rest and hurried over to stand uncertainly before the two big shots.

            "Sergeant," Retief spoke up before
Hish could speak. "Come to the Position of a Soldier, but first hand me
that sidearm."

            The non-com looked dubiously at Hish, taking due
note of the drumming oculars. He did the top-formal Six Rank or Higher salute,
employing both primary manipulatory members, three eyes, and both skinny legs;
then he unholstered his Borovian wire-gun and handed it, butt first, to Retief.

            "To snap out of it, Whish," Hish
snapped, "before you dislocate something, Corporal!" The general
returned the honorific with a casual flip of an ocular.

            "But I'm—" Whish started, then
snapped-to, his eyes on Retief.

            "You mean you
were
a sergeant,"
Hish corrected his underling, who began an objection, but was sharply silenced.
"I shall do the talking," Hish snapped. "You know Retief, here,
a Terry civilian with a reputation—"

            Thanks, General," Retief cut him off.
"I'll take it from here. Sergeant," he went on, "things have
come unstuck, it appears. Certain usually reliable local elements have changed
sides and are even now approaching the port, intent on tearing limb-from-limb all
foreigners not blessed with Terryhood. I may be able to save you boys, if
you'll be nice."

            "Sure, sir," Whish gasped. "I
always said not to trust that Wim Dit sell-out! Sure, to be nice is my
specialty. Ain't that right, General?" He paused, awaiting approval that
was not forthcoming. Instead, Hish hissed:

            "Avoid the particle 'ain't' when speaking
Terry! It's
déclassé,
and we don't want Retief to get the idea we're
like these unsophisticated locals!"

        "But everybody says
it, General, sir!" Whish protested.

            "Ignorant rabble, possessed of cheap,
no-name-brand translators," Hish dismissed the impertinence.

            " 'Ain't' is actually the Scandinavian
negative particle 'inte,' introduced in the days of Old English by the Viking
invaders—"

            "But to have thought Terra to never have
been invaded!" Whish carped.

            "Certainly not!" Hish confirmed.
"To have meant not Terra itself, but an outlying world called Britain
which suffered the depredations of the Swedes!"

            "Guess I was inna brig or the pest-house
the week they covered that part at the NCO Academy, sir," Whish mourned.
"But now to have gotten that stuff out of the way, what about this Terry
here?"

            "General," Retief interjected gently,
"you know just how to answer the sergeant's legitimate query."

            "To be well aware of that!" Hish
sniffed. "Sergeant, to regret to disillusion you, but for compelling
reasons made known to me, I have just turned over command to Mr. Jame Retief.
You will carry out his orders with an alacrity which will reflect credit on Groaci
military training. Do it!"

            "Huh, sir?" Whish gasped. "But
he's a Terry, pure stock, and it was the Terries we were s'pose to
sucker!"

            "Change in plan, Sergeant," Hish
explained tersely. "Rot in high places, it appears. Counselor Shish, whom
you see deep in conversation with the infamous Ben Magnan just over there, is
deeply involved. Notice the snappy late-model coupe he's driving, received,
doubtless, as a part of his payoff."

            "To be
his
pay-off," Whish
grunted, "but where's mine?"

            "Right here," Retief said, and showed
him the butt of a 2mm at his hip. When the Groaci noncom recoiled in horror,
Retief commented, "That's the way it is, Sarge. Now tell your lead squad
to load and lock one round of ball ammunition."

            Whish scuttled back to his ranked troops and
hissed orders. The troops snapped-to, did "inspection arms," loaded
and locked their pieces. Whish turned, offering Retief a casual
tentacle-salute. Retief returned it with a snappy one-two.

            "Deploy the first squad in line of assault
to envelop the rest of the platoon, and report to me," he ordered. Whish
complied. General Hish made clucking sounds in his throat-sac.

            "What in the world to intend—?" he
started, but Retief cut him off.

            "Watch," he ordered curtly. When Whish
again presented himself, Retief ordered him to form the entire platoon into an
open phalanx, and box in the rest of the company. That accomplished, with much
muttering and dragging of feet on the part of the multinational troops, Retief
told Whish to form up the entire debarked battalion flanking the landing area
where the second of the troop shuttles was now making planetfall.

            "To look here, Retief!" Hish started
blusteringly, but Retief told him to remember that he was strictly bound by the
policy of AE and MP Shinth, who was nattering casually with Magnan and Shish
near the port detention building, a small but fortresslike structure where
arriving suspects were detained awaiting the cursory Bloorian naturalization
process.

            "Barbarians!" Hish snorted. "This
confounded world is well-known to be the refuge of every scoundrel unhanged in
this end of the Arm!"

            "General," Retief said quietly.
"That's a slight exaggeration: there are still a number of petty
bureaucrats and cops on the loose in Settled Space. It will take years to round
them all up. Luckily, only moral lepers would consider accepting such posts,
making it quite a simple matter to identify them."

            "But ... you diplomats are yourselves
bureaucrats, in the loose sense!" Hish objected. "Do you include
yourself, personally, in your blatant dismissal of governmental flunkeys as
rascals?"

            "Watch how neatly I'm going to ace you out
of a battle group," Retief suggested, "And
you
answer your
question."

            Hish gnashed his mandibular plates and fell silent.
Sergeant Zoob was back, hesitating briefly between the general and Retief as
recipient of his report, but at a nod from Hish, addressing Retief:

            "Sir, to have the battalion, including
Brevet Lieutenant Grunge, all fell in and awaiting orders yonder."

            "So you have," Retief concurred, The
second vessel is about to land. Now get your troops in line of ambush behind
those crates—all except you, Sergeant. You take up your post at the foot of the
gangplank when the shuttle runs it out, present arms with a full magazine
loaded, and when the Colonel comes down the ramp, disarm him and fall his
battalion in behind yours."

            Zoob scurried back, and deployed his force to
take the new arrivals in hand; there was a brief conference with the debarking
colonel, a hulking Clunchan Black Beret, with five rows of campaign ribbons
and
the Groac Star of the Legion. After much arm-waving, the sergeant pointed
at General Hish, who erected all five oculars in a commanding gesture. Then the
colonel intercepted his company officers as they came down the landing ramp.
They hurried off to dispose their respective commands as Retief had specified.
General Hish was controlling himself with an effort evinced by the slow change
in the hue of his carapace from a deep olive to a pale chartreuse.

            "To suppose you'll order the complements of
the first two craft to capture each of their fellow contingents as they
arrive!" Hish fumed, then stepped up to confront Retief. "You, sir,
to be a rascal!"

            "Thanks very much," the Terran replied
graciously.

            "Coming from an expert in the field, that's
high praise, indeed."

            "You are crafty, Retief," Hish
acknowledged, "but no craftier than my own confounding of Simon Proudflesh
and his silly ITCH committee. An 'Interplanetary Tribunal for the Curtailment
of Hostilities', indeed! Why, it's an open attack on dedicated career military
personnel! You've doubtless heard how I finessed the entire delegation of
busybodies into an ice cave on Goblinrock, and let them languish there for three
weeks before making
big
points with Enlightened Galactic Opinion by
accidentally discovering and rescuing them! Simple Simon almost fell on his
face in the effusion of his gratitude!" Hish paused to point to one of the
many spectacular jeweled starburst decorations on his mud-colored tunic.
"I got this for that one," he purred.

            "Far more sophisticated than the mere
capture of an armed task force, General," Retief admitted. "Would you
mind taking over at this point and gathering in the rest of the boys, personally?
Just form up a battle line defending the port. When the Terran Marines arrive,
turn your boys over to Sergeant Muldoon."

            "What? A mere non-com—no offense, Sergeant
Whish—to command a full brigade of Indestructibles?"

            "Unless you'd rather fight it out with
O'Rourke," Retief offered.

            Hish considered briefly. "And an entire
squad of Terry Marines?" he queried as if incredulous. "No way! It's
'Field Marshal O'Rourke', if you say so!"

            "I do," Retief assured the Groaci
veteran. "Your legislature can handle the paper work later, so let's get
going. Call the colonel over."

            Hish uttered a near-supersonic
whist!
and,
when the busy colonel paused and looked his way, Hish pumped a tentacle up and
down, then waved it in a circular path over his head. The colonel, whose face
resembled a gutted carp, pointed to himself, miming interrogation, and Hish
flapped his eye-stalks in vigorous affirmation. The colonel beckoned to a
captain standing nearby, exchanged a few words, then returned the junior officer's
salute and came loping toward Hish. He swung in a wide curve so as to come up
on the side opposite Retief, and threw a snappy salute.

            "To kindly hold the hand salute until I
return it, Colonel Smank," Hish said coldly, and waited while the
chastened field-grader reassumed his salute and held it until Hish's leisurely
return was completed.

        "Yessir, General,
sir," Smank puffed.

            "Out of shape, eh, Colonel?" Hish
commented. "Now get this: in a moment a Terran official will arrive here,
and you're to turn over command to him at once. You can take off those eagles
and fall in at the tail end of the last squad."

            "B-busted, General?" Smank gulped.
"But all I done—did—was fall out the boys like always, and all of a sudden
Major Thuck is showing me his Mark Ten and telling me about some kind of a
foul-up—"

            "No foul-up, Smank," Hish rebuked.
"The Indestructibles have been sold out," he snarled. "Betrayed,
decoyed into an untenable position. Rather than lose crack troops in a frontal
defense, I have tendered my surrender to overwhelming Terry force, treacherously
insinuated here on this peaceful world with the express intention of spoiling
my career—and yours as well, Space'n."

            "Cripes!" Smank muttered, saluting
again just for good measure. "I spend thirty years working my way up from
deck-ape to bird colonel—and now I lose it all, just because some lousy Terry
..." He turned and swung a roundhouse at Retief, who deflected it casually
and returned a straight right to the woundlike countenance of the Slunchan,
knocking him back into the arms of Randy O'Rourke, who had come up quietly,
with his squad at "at ease." The sergeant avoided the colonel's
desperate kicks and elbows and tied his arms up in a break-it-if
you're-not-nice hold.