Rank Injustice

by Keith Laumer

1

The ten-thousand-tonner Expedient, on lease to the Interplanetary Tribunal for Curtailment of Hostilities, was holed by a six-ton slab of nickle-iron just as the four hundred assorted diplomatic staff members aboard, from as many worlds, were taking cocktails in the main lounge, in expectation of planetfall within the hour. The shock, far aft, rattled ice-cubes and sent trays of glasses sliding along the hundred-foot heowood bar, dumping a beaker of Lovenbroy pale ale into the lap of First Secretary and Consul Ben Magnan, who leaped up with a shrill cry.

“Retief! That confounded chief engineer is inebriated again! I distinctly felt the jar as he mistimed his power change-over to atmospheric!”

“Maybe,” Retief conceded. “But I’m afraid it’s something more serious this time.”

“What could be more serious than a drunken powerman in charge of re-entry?”

“A collision,” Retief told him. “A mere bobble in thrust riming wouldn’t open a seam in the bulkhead.” Magnan followed his glance toward a rent in the brocade wallpaper.

“A collision!” Magnan yelled before Retief could stop him. At once the cry was taken up by those near-by, who finished their drinks at a gulp and rushed off in all directions to spread the word.

“Where’s the captain?” demanded a gaunt mantis-like female counsellor from Glory Eleven in a voice that cut across the rising tumult like a meat-saw.

“I demand to know what he’s doing about this catastrophe!” she added, in case anyone was in doubt. She stood with two pairs of arms folded, staring around defiantly, until her gaze fell on Retief and Magnan. “You!” she yelped. “You people are Terrans like captain! What are doing to save innocent lives?”

“While, Madam,” Magnan began, “I cheerfully acknowledge the accuracy of your charge that my assistant and I indeed share with Captain Suggs the honor of being Terrans, we are in no way involved in the operation of this vessel. Anyway,” he added less graciously, “I don’t see any innocent lives being threatened.”

“You dismiss all these selfless diplomats as guilty?” the lady demanded, even more shrilly, “And of what, may I inquire?”

“You mistake my meaning, Madam,” Magnan gobbled. “I have leveled no accusation against those present! Like yourself, I cry our captain culpable! Wherever is the scamp?”

“This here Terry done called Captain Suggs a scamp,” someone commented loudly.

Retief touched Magnan’s arm. “Let’s go, Mr. Magnan,” he suggested. “You’re in a classic no-win situation.”

“Go where?” Magnan demanded, bewildered. “We’re trapped here aboard this frail perfidious bark just like everyone else! Unless, of course, you were thinking of taking to the lifeboats...?”

“Back to take a look at the damage,” Retief explained. “That was an impact aft, I think.”

“In that case one would be mad to go aft!” Magnan objected. “If we’re holed, there’ll be no atmosphere!”

“We’ll freeze before we asphyxiate,” Retief pointed out. “Unless we aren’t really holed—or if we suit up.”

The irate Glorytian lady had stamped off in a huff and was eagerly collaring other bewildered passengers to demand action.

“There he is, the incompetent!” she interrupted herself to yell, as Captain Suggs hove into view from the crowd, a slight, rather bedraggled figure in soiled whites with four tarnished gold stripes, his face unshaven.

“Whassamare?” he demanded cheerfully, skillfully scooping a full glass from an adjacent table, at the same time depositing an empty. A moment later, he discarded another empty. “I gotta order all you good folks to disperse,” he called to no one in particular. “Now, you, over there...” he waved in Magnan’s general direction as the latter approached him. “Mister Magnan, ain’t it? Used to be good on names, Mr. Mumble. You’re a Terry like me. I hereby appoint you to head up a panel to investigate whatever clobbered my command here. Aft. We been struck aft,” he elaborated.

“Pretty good smack, too, registered prolly a few tons doing twenty thou or better.” He turned abruptly and bolted, shooing confused bureaucrats from his path, ignoring the chorus of complaints.

“Why, the man is drunk, like his Powerman,” Magnan commented in an awed tone, as he returned to Reliefs side. “I shouldn’t wonder if he isn’t personally responsible for the malfunction, whatever it is.”

“He’s had a few,” Retief agreed, “but he’s spent forty years in space; when he says a few tons of something have hit us, I’m inclined to believe him.”

“Oh, dear,” Magnan moaned, then, more decisively, “But that’s highly unlikely. I read somewhere that the density of matter in interplanetary space in this system is about like six jelly-flies in Marsport’s Grand Concourse! Still, it’s Captain Suggs’s responsibility, and he’s doing nothing!”

“I guess that’s something, ain’t it, Mr. Magnan?” Suggs’s blurry voice spoke up from just behind Magnan. “When doing nothing is the best thing to do, I do it!”

“You call doing nothing doing something?” Magnan demanded, whirling to confront the Skipper.

“Sure,” Suggs acknowledged cheerfully. “Can’t take her into atmosphere if she ain’t spaceworthy, and our best bet is just to stay in parking orbit until they send a damage-control party up to 6x everything. Already got off a distress bleep,” he added. “Asked for approach number, too; they tole me to stay put.”

“Stay put?” Magnan echoed. “Do you realize, sir, that in mere minutes an ITCH conference of stupendous importance is about to begin without me?”

“Guess keeping alive until he’p gets here is more important than your eczema,” Suggs commented indifferently. “So long, Mr. Magnan, see you around—and go see my pharmacist’s mate;

he’ll fix that rash.”

“ ‘Rash,’ indeed!” Magnan burst out. He turned to Retief. “Relief!” he hissed. “I’m surprised that in this moment of crisis you’re as passive as the rest! I expected that at the least you’d nip aft and look into the captain’s allegation that we’ve been involved in a collision!”

“Aren’t you coming along, sir?” Retief asked as he put his glass on a passing tray. Magnan recoiled as if from a blast of wintry air.

“Hardly!” he hufied. “My place as Transit Director is here, maintaining order until you return to report that all is well. Listen to them,” he switched subjects with breathtaking agility. ‘They’re already at daggers drawn over who’s to take charge! Pushy of them, when it’s clear you have them all outranked, if not in your diplomatic status as a lowly Foreign Service Officer of Class Two, then in your position as Chief of the Armed Forces of your native world!”

Several sets of eyes, some stalked, others recessed light-sensitive pores, turned toward the two Terrans.

A large man with crooked teeth stepped forward; Magnan turned away after a single disapproving glance.

“Kouth is the handle,” the newcomer said in a gravelly bass voice which seemed to reverberate among the chandeliers. “You can call me ‘Boss.’ “ Magnan drew back hastily.

“ ‘Kouth’ may be, as he says, the name,” he commented to no one in particular, “but not the manner.”

“Skip that, Bub,” Kouth rumbled. “What we got to do, we got to set this here tub down on the inner moon. That’s why I’m taking over.” His gaze shifted to Retief. “You look like a pretty strong boy,” he commented. “So you’ll be my First Mate. Now, we better amble on back up to the bridge and set course fer Old Moon.”

“Here, fellow!” piped a small, cootie-like chap in elaborate diplomatic formal dress, as he popped up between the two much larger beings.

“I’m Ambassador Phoop,” he clarified. “And as senior Career Ambassador aboard, I outrank all of these military chaps; why, even a mere Career Minister ranks with and after a buck general.” In a less heated tone, he continued: “First, I must organize you, and dispatch a damage-control party. You—” he pointed at Kouth’s knee, “—and you as well,” he added as he stepped back to stare up at Retiefs six-foot-three towering over him. “You two lads are hereby designated as top sergeants to shape up this mob into squads of ten individuals, regardless of species, pigmentation, or mystical alignment with regard to the Big Goober in the Sky.”

“To fail to grasp the enormity of your cheek, Mr. Ambassador,” a breathy Groaci voice spoke in the local stunned near-silence which had followed Phoop’s pronouncement. “To admire the breathtaking audacity of such a claim to primacy,” the Groaci went on, “but of course I as an Assistant Undersecretary to Foreign Affairs, am senior diplomat aboard this vessel and as such naturally take command during the indisposition of Captain Suggs!”

“Unspeakable!” Ambassador Phoop squeaked. “It was none other than yourself, Mr. Secretary, who plied our captain with strong drink, which I myself abjure, of course, thus rendering him incapacitated in this hour of crisis!”

“What do your curious drinking habits have to do with Captain Suggs’s lack of competence, small sir?” A grossly rotund Vorplisher demanded, then turned his attention to sampling the foam on a tankard of ale. “I’m Major General Blow,” he added, “and I’m in command here,”

“You distort my meaning, sir!” Phoop squeaked, ignoring the general. “/ had nothing to do with this Suggs’s dereliction of duty!”

“This here is all academic like they say,” Kouth put in bluntly. “This here is my turf; I’m a Stugger homed and bred, whatever that is, which that’s the planet Stug figuratively like looming up on the hypothetical forward screens at the moment. I and my boys are the only native-bomed Stuggies aboard, so I’m in charge here. Any objections, any of youse pansies?”

“Plenty!” Major General Blow boomed as he charged, impacting Kouth like a runaway fork-lift colliding with a semi loaded with gravel. Kouth responded by backing into a table covered with trays of empties, then hoisted the belligerent Vorplisher above his head and threw him into the faces of the fascinated onlookers.

“Some guys has wrong ideas about when to get tough,” he commented. “Now the rest o’ you recruits line up agin the wall over there!”

“ ‘Wall,’ indeed!” an ornately-uniformed spider-lean fellow from Wolf Nine, a minor world listed as Booch in the New Catalog, spoke up indignantly. “It’s clear, sir, you are unqualified to serve as a deck-swabber last class, to say nothing of assuming command of a deep-space vessel in dire distress! In navel parlance that’s called a ‘bulkhead,” he finished quite calmly.

After a moment of silence, punctuated by a single “‘ear, ‘ear!” from somewhere back in the crowd, the skinny chap went on:

“I myself am Grand Captain of Avenging Flotillas Blance, representing the Boochian Combined Armed Forces. It is clear that no one here can challenge my credentials as ranking Being aboard!” He stepped out of line, leaned tete-a-tete with another of like physique, then made shooing motions.

“What I hear,” a squat, burly, green-furred code clerk attached to the Hondu Military Attache put in, “Booch ain’t got no navy. Nor no other armed forces, neither.”

“What is at issue here, my man—” Fhoop started, only to be cut off by the Hondu with a peremptory gesture.

“I ain’t no man. Cap, and I shore ain’t yourn!” he corrected the diplomat.

“—is not a comparative assessment of military appropriations,” Phoop continued, undaunted, “but a simple matter of personal rank.”

“A Grand Captain of an imaginary fleet don’t outrank a Deck-swabber Last Class in a first-class fighting outfit,” the Hondu declared, “Like me. So you can go into a early retirement, Admiral, DS-LC Gloon is here!”

Before Grand Captain Blance could reply, he was thrust aside unceremoniously by Kouth, who in turn was jostled by General Blow as both contenders for leadership stepped forward to advance their claims.

“We set her down nice and easy on Old Moon,” Kouth declared loudly.

“I have determined—” General Blow began, only to be cut off by Admiral Blance.

“A land-lubber, though of two-star rank, has no place in command in space!” he stated, but his further remarks were cut short when Gloon elbowed the wafer-thin Boochian, then to his astonishment was at once knocked flat by a snake-swift blow from the Grand Captain.

“You will not venture again to lay hands on the person of a Boochian Grand Captain,” the indignant officer said harshly.

“I never laid no hand on nobody,” Gloon objected as he regained his feet with an assist from a slightly smaller Hondu in NCO whites. “All I laid on you was a elbow!”

“The principle is the same, DS-LC!” Blance dismissed the matter. “Now, I think you may as well take charge of that half of this mob of civilians, and form up in a column of ducks!”

“I don’t guess no DS-LC is gonna fall me in,” General Blow objected. “I done my basic thirty years ago, and I demand—”

What the general would have demanded was not to be known, as at that moment the hitherto relatively orderly crowd dissolved into a melee, as officious drill sergeants spot-promoted by half a dozen competing captains pro tern attempted to form the rank-conscious civilian diplomats into manageable units, Kouth’s polyglot supporter being the most vocal.

Magnan clutched at Reliefs sleeve. “Now, for sure, it’s time to slip away,” he summarized. “And I’ve decided, yes, I shall accompany you. I don’t care for that Kouth person at all. So, shall we?”

2

“It’s as good a time as any,” Relief agreed, fending off a belligerent Yillian with ornate rank badges, sending him reeling into a fist-fight, in which the grey-skinned flag officer cheerfully joined.

“This is all most unseemly!” Magnan exclaimed, stepping aside barely in time to avoid being swept up in a three-being wrestling match. “As designated Director of this party, I myself—”

“Forget it, Ben,” a lowly Terran corporal of the Jawbone Planetary Defense Force advised just before he was struck down by a Haterakan supreme Overlord of Irresistible Armadas, a rank equivalent to a Bloovian maker of ritual Grimaces, Third Class, Magnan noted.

“Cheeky to a degree,” Magnan sniffed, slapping the hypothetical dust of the near-encounter from the lapels of his Late Early Mid-moming cutaway. “It’s no wonder,” he added in an aside to Retief, “that Sector has reported piracy and wreckers operating in this region, if that Boss Kouth is any example of the local ruling class.”

“I heard that crack, Ben,” a nosy Groaci Consular Officer informed the Terran. “If you Ter ries are so worried about dacoits and corsairs operating in Stuggish space, hows come you decided to stage this ITCH convention right here in the middle of No Being’s Land, hah?”

“Simplicity itself, Thiss,” Magnan replied loftily. “It is precisely because this region is a hotbed of deep-space crime that we selected it as the appropriate site for talks designed to diminish that very problem.”

“Hold! Enough!” a deep voice boomed out. All eyes turned toward a two-ton Fustian elder who had risen from his usual torpor to loom over the lesser beings all around him.

“I,” he stated, “am Field Marshall Whelk, and if it’s rank you’re looking for, I’ve got rank I haven’t even used yet. Get thee hence, all but you—” he pointed a stubby but massive clawed hand at Kouth—”and you—and you,” designated the Hondu spac’n as well as Admiral Phoop. “You fellows are my lieutenants,” he explained in a tone which invited no discussion. “Now restore order here, and do it quietly.”

“I tell ya we gotta make for Old Moon,” Kouth stated boldly. He turned to address his appeal to the raggedly formed-up crowd, Whelk having already resumed his slumber. “It’s our only chan-cet!” Kouth declared.

“And I say we hold orbit like the cap’n said!” someone rebutted from the rear rank. “Rescue party’s on the way!” A barrel-shaped, deep-blue Krakan swaggered forth to confront Kouth.

Kouth motioned, and half a dozen of his adherents emerged from the crowd to surround the Krakan. While everyone was engrossed in the power struggle, Magnan ducked out a side door and Retief accompanied him.

3

The passage leading aft past Stores to Power Section was silent and deserted. Then a big spac’n in soiled whites with the nine blue stripes of a Chief Master Spaceman First, Stuggish Merchant Marine, stepped from a side passage and came toward the two civilians.

“No crust-huggers allowed here,” he announced in a tone of weary authority, then halted, blocking the passage. “I’m McCluskey, he added. “Chief McCluskey, to you.”

“Where did it hit?” Magnan inquired in a tone which was almost a squeak. “Do step aside, my man,” he went on, “we’re on our way to inspect the damage.”

“I guess maybe you don’t hear so good, chum,” the Chief announced, “I tole youse onct. no civilians in my Power Section, OK? So you better just turn around and tip-toe back to yer easy chairs. Now, before I start to get annoyed and all.”

“Do step aside, I say, fellow,” Magnan repeated. “We’ve no time for gossip just now.”

“Oh, yeah?” the powerman came back truculently. “Well, I’m telling you. Junior, you got no business here aft. Youse could get hurt. Hot stuff could be sloshing around all over the place. Shoo! Leave us pros deal with this here.”

“ ‘Might be,’ you say,” Magnan echoed. “I think we need a trifle more specific assessment of the status than that.” Magnan paused, then clutched Retiefs arm. “Goodness,” he gushed. “What if this gorilla is right? We could receive a fatal blast of radiation as soon as we open the hard-seal doors.”

McCluskey advanced a step toward Magnan, seeming, as he did so, to expand to fill the narrow passage. “I guess you never called me a gorilla,” he commented mildly.

“ ‘Guerilla,’ “ Magnan corrected breathlessly. “An heroic freedom fighter, that is. One mustn’t go putting words in the mouths of others,” he added.

McCluskey showed Magnan a fist as big as a cabbage. “It ain’t words I’m thinking of putting in yer mush, Cull, and I never fought no freedom. You got two seconds; one t’ousan and one, a t’ousan an two—”

Magnan turned to flee, but rebounded from Relief and staggered back directly into the big powerman, who fended him off, looking puzzled.

“Never figgered the little shrimp to charge me,” he mused aloud. “Backwards, too. Must be some new Idnda martial arts for weaklings or like that,” He picked Magnan up and paused as if uncertain what to do next.

“You’d better put Mr. Magnan down. Chief,” Retief suggested gently. “Otherwise he might decide to unleash his ire on you.”

“Where?” McCluskey looked over, through, and past Retief. “I don’t see no leashed ire, nor no other kind neither. Had a pal once, had this here catamount on a leash, spose to be trained and all. Onney one day it got hungry and ate my pal’s leg off before he could remember to say ‘heel.’ “

“That’s a very melancholy anecdote. Chief,” Retief said. “Now, about the damage aft. What hit us? And precisely where? Did it penetrate the impact hull? Is there any radioactive leakage?”

“Well, now, just a minute, Bud. What hit us, we got clobbered by a iron-nickle, looks like, and it come through the hull, all three layers and the containment bulkhead and busted the coolant system wide open, after which I didn’t see no more, cause I still plan to get hitched some day and father some little deckhands, which I don’t want ‘em to have two heads and all.”

“Reasonable enough. Chief,” Relief acknowledged. “But suppose we just suit up and go take a closer look.”

“Well, old Cap Suggs will split a gusset when he hears about it,” the Chief grumped. “But I guess somebody got to do somethin. So, OK. Equipment lockers is right over there.”

Minutes later all three men were fully clad in what McCluskey referred to as ‘lead underwear.’ Magnan complained bitterly at the poor fit and excessive weight of the R-garment, a Mark XV.

“One can’t even breathe in this contraption,” he carped. “To say nothing of walking, not to mention doing anything useful.”

“Why don’t you just lie down here,” Retief suggested, indicating a long, padded table intended for use during fitting of the custom-tailored suits. “The Chief and I will handle it.”

“Hey, I just come to think,” McCluskey interjected. “I ain’t said youse are goin’ in there with me. The both of youse better wait right here. I’ll take a quick look-see and let you know what the status is.”

Retief went past the Chiefs bulky, R-suited figure, and cycled the entry hatch into Power Section. McCluskey, still objecting, followed. Magnan lay back with a groan.

“Hurry, Retief,” he called after his departing colleague. “I’m sure I’m going to suffocate if I’m not released from this strait-jacket within the minute.”

Retief paused to call over his shoulder. “Just take deep breaths, Mr. Magnan. I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Unless these gammas get to you, first,” McCluskey added cheerfully as he clanged the hatch behind him.

Retief went across to the gaping frost-rimmed rent caused by the entry of the object the ship had struck; it was approximately sealed by a slab of tough, versatile plastron, which had been slapped in place by the automatics immediately after the penetration.

“That there rubber’ll hold OK for a hour or two, maybe, before it cryodegrades,” McCluskey estimated. “Before then what I got to do, I got to get a class three temporary in there.”

“Meanwhile,” Relief told him, “you’d better start up the contain-and-exhaust gear.”

“Sure,” the chief acknowledged. “I was goin’ to.”

“That why you were out in the passage, headed forward?” Retief inquired pointedly.

“That sounds to me like some kind of crack,” McCluskey announced, and moved toward Retief with one large, gauntleted fist cocked. Retief pushed his clumsy swing aside and said, “Tsk, naughty. The C and E, remember?” The big spacer moved on, muttering. Retief studied the trajectory of the missile, clearly marked by a swath of cut pipes, conduits and cables, all leading to the missile it-seli, half-buried in the massive casting which housed the converter gear. He went over and looked at the slab of partly-melted iron, deep-pocked and porous, perforated b...