Retief and the Warlords

 

By Keith Laumer

Retief is a First Secretary in the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne. His boss is Magnan, Assisstant Deputy Undersecretary of Inter-species Affairs. The inter-species Magnan is currently concerned about are the Haterakans, a warlike species making inroads against a group of frontier Terran worlds. Magnan's solution to Haterakan aggressions is four fold:

• PAUPER or Panel for Alien Uplift Protection Enlightenment and Relief.
• CHUMP or Council for Humane Understanding of Minority Problems.
• SUCKER or Special Unit for Conferring Knowledge on Emergent Races.
• Retief - throwing the work all on Retief and sending him off to deal with the Haterakans.

Retief gets captured by a Haterakan, Fleetmaster Harrumph. Expecting a hero's welcome when Harrumph returns to Haterakan territory with his captive, instead Harrumph and Retief are arrested and tortured and placed into an arena for public execution.  The execution doesn't go quite the way the Haterakan leader, Grand Admiral Hikop, anticipated. Thanks to the chaos that Retief creates, he and Harrumph escape in a stolen spacecraft and make their way to Terran territory and throw in with the locals who are standing against the Haterakans invaders.

A few parts of this story are amusing like Magnan's three programs meant to contain the Haterakans with what are basically bribes and Retief and Harrumph being tortured as Retief finds the torture mildly annoying at worst. But other than that, the book is mostly about the struggle between the local Terrans and the invading Haterakans, with battles and plotting and even a fist fight. I think Laumer is at his best when he is being funny and funny is mostly lacking in this story.