Phule Me Twice by Robert Asprin & Peter J. Heck

“Well, bro, that was the scuttlebutt at the time,” said C. H. “You stay around the Legion long enough, you hear all kinds of stuff, and after a while you get a feel for what you can believe and what you can’t.”

Street’s face took on a puzzled expression. “Man, it was you done told us that.”

Chocolate Harry didn’t look up from his fingernail cleaning. “Was it, now? You sure ’bout that, Street?”

Street turned to his companions for support, and when he saw them nodding their heads, he turned back to the supply sergeant and said, “Yeah, it was you, all right. You kep’ tellin’ , us ’bout that asteroid full of renegade robots and how we was gonna need this here robot camo to keep ’em from zappin’ us. Ain’t that right?”

“What if it is?” asked Harry casually.

“Well, looks to me like this ain’t no freakin’ asteroid,” said Street, sweeping his arm around the horizon in a grand circle. “So we done been skanked, is what I think.”

Chocolate Harry’s broad face took on an expression of profound sympathy. “Skanked? What makes you think that, Street?” He looked around at the others. “I’m surprised at you. Double-X, what’re you doin’ here? Brick, Slayer, you too? And Spartacus-you and me have always been tight.”

“Sarge, you told us we needed that robot camo, and we paid you a pretty stiff price for it,” said Double-X, trying to regain control of the encounter. Like the other legionnaires in the group, he wore several garments made of the purple-splotched fabric Chocolate Harry had represented as robot-proof. “But they sent us to this here world, not that asteroid.”