Trang (5 page)

The Titan station was white and
spare, but crammed with people—despite repeated expansions, overcrowding was a
constant problem. Back on Earth, an SA staffer had told Philippe that, while at
the station, he would be sleeping in a wall cubby. The staffer, apparently
expecting some objection, had made a point of noting that the cubby’s regular
resident would be sleeping on the floor.

Even these finished sections of the
station looked something like a construction zone—directional signs had been
scrawled directly onto the walls. But there were also large, brass signs with
arrows saying “General Manager’s Office,” and these they followed. Eventually
they came to a door that bore another brass sign, “Wouter Hoopen: General
Manager.”

Philippe’s guide opened the door,
and Philippe walked in to what apparently was an outer office, with a
well-appointed receptionist’s desk and chairs. Standing in the middle of the
room was a middle-aged, sandy-haired man in a space suit whom Philippe
recognized immediately as Wouter Hoopen. He was facing a considerably larger
black-haired man in camouflage and a woman, also in camouflage, who was almost
as broad as the larger man and several centimeters taller.

Philippe recognized her and stepped
over. “Hi!” he said.

She looked at him, polite but
puzzled. “Hello,” she replied, as one would to a too-friendly stranger.

Oh, crap,
thought Philippe.
Of course, her height and mahogany skin were identical. She had the same round
nose and prominent cheekbones.

But she wasn’t the person he knew.
Her black, curly hair was cropped short, and her left earlobe was distorted, as
his soon would be. She was leaner, giving her face a more-pronounced heart
shape, and her shoulders and arms were more muscular.

“I’m sorry,” he said, embarrassed.
“I-I think I know one of your sisters.”

“Oh!” she said, unfazed. “Well,
since you’re the ambassador, you probably know Kali—she’s a big peace activist,
lives in Ottawa.”

“I know a human-rights activist in
Ottawa named
Kelly
Pax,” said Philippe.

“Yeah, yeah,
Kelly
now. She
was Kali when we were kids. The Pax names always confuse me.” She put out her
hand. “I’m Shanti Pax. Mission commander.”

Hoopen stuck out his hand, but
Philippe was distracted by the logo stitched onto the front of Shanti’s
camouflage shirt—a snarling jungle cat, with fangs bared. The detail of the
mouth and teeth suggested blood. The large man next to her had the same logo on
his shirt.

A chill ran up Philippe’s back, but
he remembered himself. He looked at the sandy-haired man, smiled, and shook the
proffered hand.

“I’m GM Hoopen,” said Hoopen. “I
wanted to introduce you to your colleagues. MC Pax obviously will be in charge
of your military escort and security. Her second, Pieter Strauss, would be
here, but he’s overseeing the final outfitting of your living space on the
alien station. And this is MO Dimas.”

The larger man looked slightly
amused. “That means medical officer,” he said as he engulfed Philippe’s hand in
one of his own. The backs of his hands were covered in black hair that ran up
his powerfully muscled forearms. “In other words, I’m your doctor. And please
call me George.”

“Yes, he’s your medical officer, a
respected emergency-medicine specialist,” said Hoopen. “He also has a graduate
degree in zoology.”

“Well, it was nice meeting you
both, and I look forward to working with you,” Philippe said, keeping the
strain out of his voice, and he hoped, his face. He turned to Hoopen. “Do you
mind if we have a brief chat, in there?” He pointed toward the inner office.

“Not at all,” Hoopen said, and
headed inside. Philippe waved at the other two with a smile, and then shut the
door, leaving them in the outer office. He watched as Hoopen walked behind a
sizable desk made of dark wood and laden with gadgets, and sat down. Behind him
was an entire wall of large, expensive-looking monitors.

“What’s going on here?” Philippe
asked sharply.

“What?” said Hoopen, raising an
eyebrow. “You don’t want to work with a clone?”

His blunt use of the term surprised
Philippe. “I don’t care about that,” he replied. “And you shouldn’t call them
clones. It’s offensive. I don’t care that she’s one of the Pax sisters. I care
that she’s one of the
Special Forces
.”

Hoopen gave him a surprised look
and put his hands in the air. “You knew when you agreed to this assignment that
you would be accompanied by an entourage of twenty soldiers—”

“
Soldiers.
Not combat
specialists. Not killers. I assumed that I would be working with
soldiers.
Peacekeepers.
”

Hoopen stared at him for a moment,
and then gave a quick laugh. “The UP?” he asked. “You thought you were going
through with the UP at your back? So if the aliens attack, you want the Yoopers
to put them down with, what, sticky guns and poofballs?”

“The DiploCorps
always
works
with the Union Police—” said Trang.

“Not this time—” said Hoopen.

“We
always
work with the
Union Police because we can trust them to not make a situation worse. If we
fail, and the UP fails, then and
only
then do the Sister
You-Know-What-ers get to come in and kill everybody.”

“The SF has been on this from the
beginning. They’ve been the ones outfitting your area of the station. They’ve
been doing it for
months.
” Hoopen paused. “They haven’t killed anything
or blown anything up yet.”

“Not
yet.
It’s the Special
Forces. Give them time,” Philippe spat.

He was upset, and it was showing.
He took a breath, willing himself to appear calm and logical.

“What’s going on here, Hoopen?” he
continued, in a more reasonable tone of voice. “I come here thinking that we’re
going to try to make friends with these people—”

“These
aliens,
” said Hoopen.

“—and I find that I’m going through
with twenty homicidal maniacs and, what, a vivisectionist?”

“The Special Forces are the
best-equipped, best-trained military force the Union has. Which means they are the
best-equipped, best-trained military force the Earth has.”

“If you want somebody dead, they
are the best,” said Philippe. “They are very good indeed at making people dead.
So what are they doing here?”

Hoopen threw up his arms. “
I
didn’t ask!
” he exclaimed. “I didn’t ask. It’s not my place to ask. I don’t
understand why
you’re
asking.”

“You don’t—?” Philippe stared
disbelievingly at Hoopen for a moment, and then realized that the man was
telling the truth.

Hoopen genuinely did not understand
why Philippe would object to taking a combat force on a diplomatic mission.
Either he didn’t get the significance of it—which was possible, since he wasn’t
DiploCorps, Union Police, or Special Forces—or he didn’t understand why
Philippe should care.

Maybe if I try a different tack.

“Hoopen,” he said, confidentially.
“Think about it. The Union knows what standard operating procedure is on a
diplomatic mission. If they’re going to deviate from that—and trust me, this is
a major deviation—they should have told me. Why didn’t they tell me? Why wasn’t
I briefed on this?”

“Why do you ask so many questions?
Who do you think you are?” Hoopen snapped back, unmoved. “You’re just a junior
diplomat, and people far more senior than you or me have made up their minds.
I’m not going up against that. It’s simple for me—the SF is going through the
Titan portal.”

Philippe opened his mouth to reply.

“No, no, no,” said Hoopen, shaking
his head and wagging a finger at Philippe as if he were a child. “The Union
decided: It’s the SF. Period. They are going to provide protection to whichever
diplomat goes through that portal. They didn’t tell you because it’s none of
your business. There is nothing you can do about it; there is nothing I can do
about it.”

Philippe opened his mouth again.

“
Before
you make a fuss,”
Hoopen interrupted, “just remember that there are a thousand others just like
you. Maybe they’re not as well-connected, but they are just as qualified and
just as eager. They are all happy to take your place. So for you, the choice is
simple: You can be the diplomat who goes through the portal with the SF and
lives on the alien station, or you can be the diplomat who goes back to Ottawa,
and somebody else goes through that portal with the SF. It’s entirely up to
you.”

Philippe stared at Hoopen. There
would be no help here. Philippe could see right through the station manager:
Hoopen was a fraud, fat and happy to be the little king of his little hill, and
as long as his station was expanding and his budget was increasing, he would go
along with
anything
the Union brass wanted.

Philippe began to feel the fury
rising in him. Hoopen had him over a barrel, he was compromising the mission,
and he just didn’t care. He
couldn’t
care because all was right in his
little corner of the world, and his little bureaucratic mind could encompass
nothing beyond that.

Yoli will be so disappointed,
Philippe
thought
.

He couldn’t even look at the little
man. He needed to think and think fast, and Hoopen was making him so angry that
he couldn’t think at all. Philippe looked down at the floor, calming himself.

His eyes followed the elaborate
pattern of the wood inlay there.

Parquet floors?
he thought
for a moment.
Damn, this is a nice office.

He put it all out of his mind. He
needed to
think.

Hoopen was right about one thing:
Philippe had only two choices, stay or leave.

Frame the problem that way, and
Philippe knew immediately what he was going to do. He would be damned if he was
going to leave this mission—Earth’s first diplomatic mission to the aliens—in
the hands of hacks, fools, and maniacs. Shridar and Ming had been right—the
Union
was
ambivalent, and there were probably strong forces who wanted
to see the mission fail.

But Philippe wasn’t one of them:
This mission mattered to him, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to succeed
without
someone
on it who gave a damn and who knew what to do.

And he knew what to do. Hoopen was
wrong about him: He wasn’t well-connected—his parents were farmers, for God’s
sake. Whoever put him on the mission, it wasn’t someone who wanted it to fail.
It was someone who knew damned well there weren’t a thousand others out there
just like him.

“My
true
name is
Shanti
Pax!
” she sing-songed, and then laughed. “But my
original
name is
Surpanakha—you haven’t heard of her. Minor Hindu demon. Kind of a puss,
actually. Not cool like Kali.”

They walked along a little bit when
Shanti suddenly opened a door and looked in. She waved Philippe in and shut the
door behind him. Only then did he realize that she had led him into an empty
office.

“Oh, George took off the minute you
guys went in, don’t worry. And you know, I’m OK with it—at least you have an
original reason for not wanting to work with me.”

“I’m really, I’m so sorry,”
stammered Philippe. “I just, I—”

“You don’t want to be sandbagged, I
understand.” Shanti paused for a minute, thinking. “I know you think maybe
we’re not on the same page here, but let me tell you something: The SF has done
everything we can possibly do to ensure our safety on this mission.
Everything
.

“Even so, if the aliens turn out to
be hostile, if they turn on us? There is no doubt in my mind that we are all
dead. We built our area, but they built the station, and God only knows what
they’ve built into it. Hoopen might tell you that your life depends on us, but
the truth is, our lives depend on you and you doing your job. So we are not
looking to start a fight.”

Philippe stared at her.

Shanti smiled and opened the door
to the hall. “We’re not the
Suicidal
Fuckers, you know.”

They walked out. Philippe felt
suddenly ashamed.

“I’m sorry I confused you with
Kelly,” he said.

“Oh, that’s nothing! This training
buddy of mine, she spotted Muireartach in Bangalore, and walked right up to her
and grabbed her tit, like that—” Shanti made a twisting gesture with her hand.
“Luckily she shouted, ‘Protect your package!’ just before she did it, so
Muireartach realized it had to be someone military. Which is good, because
they’re both pretty tough, and I like them both and would hate to see them fuck
each other up. But you know what will bother people? That Sister Fucker
bullshit. You’ll hear us call ourselves that, but you’re not in the SF, and
it’s not a good idea for you to do it. You can ‘you-know-what’ around it all
you fucking want, but you’ll still wake up with a slit throat.”