The Fleet 01 by David Drake (ed), Bill Fawcett (ed) Page B

translator on his collar repeated the words in Tripean.
    “Greetings from the Mighty Empire of the People,” Ar’arnaas answered in his most pompous voice. The humans and Tripeans were of about the same mass, with the humans all taller by a third than their visitors and the Tripeans nearly twice as wide.
    “If you wait for a moment, a suitable Honor Guard will arrive. We were not sure where you would choose to land,” the Commodore explained. “This is Marine Lieutenant Anders.”
    A few seconds later a small ground effect vehicle arrived accompanied by the scream of strained fans. It was completely closed with mirrors for windows and ornately decorated. A reasonable vehicle for a hot climate, the intelligence man decided. They all noted that the craft was large enough to hold only a handful of humans.
    “They insult us with the size of the Honor Guard,” Ar’arnaas murmured under his breath. He was disturbed when the small translator on the humans’ shoulders seemed to repeat his comment, but both men continued to display their teeth in what the councillors had decided must be a sign of approval.
    The vehicle had barely settled to the ground when ten men in dark green uniforms poured out of its single door. They formed a short double line on both sides of the doorway.
    The Tripeans were about to begin walking the long empty distance to the line when a second squad of ten emerged. These were followed quickly by a third ten and then a fourth. The councillors began to shift colors toward pale lavender.
    The aliens’ color grew brighter and redder as men continued to emerge until at least two hundred lined their entire path to the seemingly tiny aircar. A livid purple Ar’arnaas led the group toward the car. It was empty when they entered it and seemed no larger than it appeared from the outside.
    “Telemetry error,” Jard’de, a peace faction councillor and the nephew of the now disgraced planetary commander, commented just loud enough to be heard.
    Ar‘arnaas turned a darker shade of purple, but said nothing. “This vehicle is programmed to travel by itself to ensure your privacy,” the marine lieutenant explained, sticking his head inside the door. “My men will escort you to your quarters.”
    Saluting, he pulled his head back outside of the hatch and it closed silently. A moment later the craft rose to the murmur of fan blades and began to drift very slowly toward a distant building. The Honor Guard, all two hundred and forty marines, marched alongside. Adding to the aliens’ confusion was the panorama of every ship on the field rising silently and disappearing into the cloudless sky. One of the Tripean intelligence officers spoke into a “decoration” on his harness and then looked up.
    “They went FTL a few diameters out,” he advised the councillors. ”Slightly different electronic signatures than any we have on record. Definitely a second force.”
    The six Tripeans felt cramped in the small groundcar. As their color returned to gray, each searched the car but found nothing suspicious. All had tinges of blue when the car finally arrived at a building in a remote corner of the base. Ar’arnaas noted that there was only one other building nearby, a one-story structure with only one entrance. It appeared to be heavily guarded.

    “Blue! Now he wants blue ships. He’s stark raving mad!”
    Gunner’s Mate Simpkins complained loudly as he scraped the last of the red paint off the hull of the Fleet cruiser Adelaide. A week earlier he had sweated to scrape green off the same surface under the hot McCauley sun and thought no job could be more miserable. He discovered now that he had been wrong. Doing the same job while the ship orbited just beyond the last, frozen member of McCauley’s solar system was an even more undesirable task. The spaceman was stiff and was sore from the effort of working in a spacesuit. Worse yet, he couldn’t scratch the spot on his back that itched and it was three more