By Other Means by Evan Currie Page A

exhaust plume of a VASIMR drive left in terms of non-annihilated antimatter, of course she’d never really cared either.
    For a system with as much traffic as the one they were currently visiting, that simply
had
to be a serious navigational hazard. She was almost surprised that no environmental groups on Earth had begun protests yet, the more she thought about it.
    Of course, she’d seen the radiation and high energy particle pulses put out by the enemy’s warp drives, so really she didn’t think they had a lot of room to complain, but maybe she was misunderstanding something. It wasn’t her concern, in any case.
    Right now, her worry was more about the presentation and welcoming ceremony she was ordered to attend.
    *****
    The massive lock cycled, lifting the alien shuttle up from the evacuated landing deck to the flight deck where the welcoming ceremony was to be held.
    Fleet men and women were lined up in perfect ranks, resplendent in their dress whites. The Marines of the USV Mexico had broken out their traditional dress blues and regalia, right down to the ceremonial sabers that always made Sorilla want to chuckle.
    She herself, along with a scattering of others on board, was dressed In OPCOM blacks. More utilitarian than the rest, but respectable enough to pass for something one wore to special occasions. The largely civilian representatives of the Diplo-protection team were also in black, but they wore suits tailored to hide the powerful handguns worn underneath.
    Sorilla wasn’t hiding her weapons.
    Her OPCOM Metalstorm 44 was riding on her right thigh, and her fighting blade rested low on her left. If anyone asked, she was authorized to carry as a member of the Diplo-protection detail, but she practically defied anyone to have the gall to ask.
    The hatch on the alien lander opened quicker than she’d expected, causing her eyes to narrow as she examined the craft a little closer.
    It’s a troop deployment shuttle. Almost missed it, look very similar to what the file said was a courier shuttle.
    The hatch served as a gangplank, and Sorilla watched as the aliens stepped down and onto the deck of the Mexico.
    She recognized the species she’d fought against, even the ones she’d only see second hand. A blue skinned Parithalian seemed to be the one in charge, judging from positions and body language, though it was impossible to be certain since her files were all geared toward recognizing human interations.
    This will be a perfect chance to start changing that,
Sorilla decided as the procession continued on.
    The Lucians were there as well, and she wasn’t surprised to find that they were armed and arrayed as bodyguards. Her implants screamed at her, though, and that did take her out of the moment for a second while she refocused on what they’d spotted.
    The boss Lucian, if she were right in her guess, was carrying a familiar blade. It was an OPCOM carbon blade with molecular edging, which meant it was a war trophy. She focused on him a lot closer, trying to determine what she could about him.
    Unfortunately, while it sounded bad to say or think, the Aliens really did all look alike. Humans were trained from birth to recognize very subtle clues in the features of those they encountered frequently, but that tended to make many people feature blind when they moved farther away from their personal normal. Sorilla had trained for years to beat that tendency, it was necessary in her line of work that she not look at a foreign face and think that they all looked the same to her, but the aliens were just too… alien, she was finding.
    Another thing to work on,
She noted, suppressing a scowl before turning her implants loose on the Lucian.
    She wasn’t expecting much, frankly, they only had images of half a handful of the enemy they’d identified as Charlie, but she ran the image recognition anyway. That meant she was all the more shocked when it found a match, and damn near floored when the match was superimposed