Trang by Mary Sisson Page A

get enhanced. It’s a hell of a lot harder with the naked eye, even if
you’re augmented.”
    The pilot’s fingers went to work
again, and the ship eased up next to one of the docking bays—Philippe hoped it
was the right one, otherwise some alien was going to have a few unexpected
guests. The ship shuddered as they docked.
    “Welcome home!” trilled Patch from
the back.
    “Time to see if Patch did his job
right,” Shanti yelled back. She reached up and touched Pinky’s shoulder. “Don’t
you guys leave until we say so.”
    “Got it,” Pinky replied.
    Philippe was ready to go, but
Shanti stopped him—apparently the SFers had to go in first with their biggest
guns in hand. He heard them shout “Clear!” at each other for what seemed like
an hour. While he was waiting, Philippe went into the cargo area and found his
bag. Eventually Patch stepped back into the ship and told him that, yes, things
were clear, would Philippe like a quick tour of the place? Philippe
enthusiastically agreed, quickly slinging his bag over his shoulder and
following Patch out into the space station.
    Stepping through the doorway,
Philippe looked around excitedly, and then rolled his eyes. The living area was
Union-built all right—here he was, nowhere near the Earth’s solar system, out
of his own galaxy, even,and the hallway he stepped into looked clean
and white, exactly like the hallways of Titan, exactly like the hallways of
Beijing.
    And it felt exactly like Beijing
too....
    “Hey Patch,” Philippe asked,
interrupting Patch as he pointed out an armory. “Why is there gravity?”
    “Uh, yeah,” Patch said, looking slightly
guilty. “The gravity. OK. You know how this area is all supposed to be
outfitted on Earth, with Earth technology, right? So the aliens would say,
like, ‘Do you want to do the atmosphere, or do you want us to do the
atmosphere?’ And we’d say, ‘ We’re doing the atmosphere.’”
    “Uh-huh,” said Philippe.
    “Well, then one day they said, ‘Do
you want to do the gravity, or do you want us to do the gravity?’ And we asked
Titan, and they asked Beijing, and the SA was like, ‘What do you mean, do the
gravity? We can’t fucking make gravity.’ And the SF was like, ‘Well, we
can’t fucking fight without it,’ right, ’cuz you train mostly in gravity. And
they were arguing about it, because you know, maybe the gravity could be some
kind of weapon or a trap or something.
    “So we didn’t get back to the
aliens with an answer, and I was here—I mean on the shuttle, overseeing stuff,
you know—and they asked again. So I, um, I sort of said to them, ‘Why don’t you do the gravity?’ Like we were doing them a favor.”
    “As though it were goodwill
gesture,” said Philippe.
    “Yeah,” said Patch. “And I still
haven’t heard back from Beijing about it, so I guess it must be OK. Except for that, and you know, the station itself, there’s no alien technology in our living
area. At least not that we know about.”
    Patch resumed the tour: Armory,
enough sleeping cubicles to house a much larger group of soldiers, armory,
entertainment area, training area, armory, armory, gym, communications center,
cafeteria, armory, infirmary, armory.
    “And this is your area,” Patch
said, opening a door and revealing a surprisingly large office. He walked
through the office and opened another door, which led to an honest-to-God
bedroom.
    “I get all this space?” Philippe
asked, walking into the bedroom and dropping his bag on the floor. There was a
door in the bedroom as well; he opened it to see a small but complete bathroom.
    “Yeah,” said Patch, going back out
into the hallway and opening another door. “This conference room is for you,
too.”
    Philippe looked in at the conference
room; it was larger even than his office.
    “You know, I’m not complaining, but
I feel weird about getting three rooms and my own bathroom when everyone else
just gets a sleep cubicle and a gang