"Ma'am, how long will we be aboard-"

"You will receive a full briefing aboard the ship." The door opposite where I'd come in opened, and I took a hint to leave. The gravity was working fine, it was the thought of being injected with tiny machines that was making me queasy. Microscopic alien robots were swimming in my blood. It was creepy.

Once our group was all done with the doctors, guards directed us to the transport ship, and hustled us along with no time for sightseeing. There wasn’t much to see on the station corridors anyway, blank walls in a light blue color, with markings in several human languages attached to the walls. The Kristang ship was more interesting, lots of access panels, corridors going in every direction, pipes or conduits along the ceilings. The walls and floors had recessed handholds, I guess for when the ship was in zero gravity. No Kristang were visible, I still had never seen one of the lizards in person. A Marine took charge of our group, and directed the men into one compartment, women into another. The compartment I was in had row after row of bunk beds, stacked three high. Each group of three bunks was attached to an arm that could rotate the stack 90 degrees for when the ship was under thrust. The Marine told us this was a Kristang multi-mission pod, which was currently configured for troop transport. We were lucky, he said, that the bunks were sized for Kristang, who were slightly larger on average than humans. I shrugged and found an empty bunk, tossed my small duffel bag into it, and secured it with a strap that I figured was there for that purpose. The bunk wasn’t bad, seven feet long, and about four feet to the bunk above it. Luxury. Somebody already had a card game going, Jesse wandered over to the game, while I flopped on my bunk and pulled out a book to read on my tablet. I was getting anxious about the tablet, it was down to about 25% power, and there didn't appear to be an electrical outlet anywhere. It looked like I'd been stupid to bring the thing into space with me.