Tap-Dancing the Minefields

by Lyn Gala

  Clyde sat on the floor feeling nearly as exhausted himself. Watching Tankersley fight through all the pain made his own wounds feel rawer than they had in a while. Losing people. It wasn’t easy. And the officers for whom it became easy weren’t worth spit.

  John frowned at him, and Clyde made a production of standing with his stiff knees. Usually he was exaggerating when he talked about his old legs, but Tankersley had put his weight onto Clyde’s left leg, and he had a raging case of pins and needles. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Clyde rubbed his sore leg.

  “You guys wouldn’t hurt so much if you weren’t so willing to give your love to so many people,” John commented.

  “Yep,” Clyde agreed. They’d talked about it on the gladiator ship—the danger of loving others and the way it stole a man’s soul when those people died. Clyde figured that neither of them needed to talk about it, because both of them had seen their share of men struggling to carry the emotional burdens the world required of them. Really, Lev should have found someone with fewer scars.

  Chapter Eighteen

  TANK WOKE up on a bed, not sure how he got there. All his clothes were on, so Lev hadn’t been involved. Sitting up, Tank cradled his head in his hands and tried to think through the pain. His head throbbed, and his whole body had that recovering-from-the-flu achiness that made him want to pull the covers up and ignore the world.

  “Here, coffee.” Colonel Aldrich shoved a cup at him, and Tank jumped, startled that he hadn’t seen him coming. Aldrich didn’t comment as he continued to hold the cup out.

  “Thanks.” Tank took it and sipped slowly as memories crowded back in. He wondered how to handle crying on a commanding officer half the night. Yep, military-protocol class left out all sorts of situations.

  “You feel better?” Aldrich asked.

  Tank had to think about that for a second. “Yes, sir. I just feel exhausted.”

  “Good. That means your body is finally coming down off full alert.”

  “Just in time for an alien incursion. Yay,” Tank said tonelessly. Oddly he couldn’t even come up with the energy to care.

  Aldrich leaned against the hotel dresser. “I think I can handle chasing a few aliens off the lawn. I’ve done it before.”

  Tank pushed himself up. “What about my friends?” Tank’s heart started to pound faster.

  “We’ll work with them,” Aldrich said. “They aren’t the bad guys here. But for now, the details haven’t been worked out. Lev is worried about you. I told him you needed a night to really stand down and he needed to give you some space. I love him, but sometimes Lev pushes when he needs to back off.”

  Tank cringed at the idea of Lev seeing him the night before. Yeah—there was pathetic, and then there was abject humiliation. Facing Lev after all the truths he hadn’t told was going to be hard, but Tank couldn’t have handled Lev’s sympathy during his breakdown. “Having him see me cry on my commanding officer, yeah, not really something on my list of things to do before I die,” Tank admitted. It was as close as he could come to thanking Aldrich. This whole situation was so uncomfortable that Tank really just wanted to run away. But knowing someone else was strong enough to carry some of the weight of this—sharing the truth with someone who had adulting down better than Tank did—had opened a floodgate Tank hadn’t known he’d carried inside.

  “That wasn’t anything to be ashamed of. Losing someone is hard, but what you had to do with Roger? It sucks.”

  Tank expected a sword through the guts at Roger’s name, but it was only a dagger that caught him under the ribs. He carefully set the coffee to the side. “We grew up together,” Tank said, the sorrow washing over him. “He wasn’t always like that. When we first found out about demons, he would have died to stop the evil. I know it.”

  “Then the man he used to be would have wanted you to take that shot.”

  Tank studied the pattern on the bedspread. “I should have saved Ellie. If I had been paying attention to how Roger was changing during—”

  “No,” Aldrich interrupted. “It was the enemy’s fault. You feel guilty because you’re a good fighter, and you always want to find a way to do your job better. Sometimes there isn’t a way to avoid casualties, and the only thing we can do is respect their memories.”

  That sounded unexpectedly supportive. “Huh.”

  “What?”

  “You’re looking at me without that just-stepped-on-a-bug expression.”

  Aldrich rolled his eyes. “Hell, Tankersley. It isn’t you that disgusts me. It’s this situation. I’ve always hated the aliens, but this whole thing with fake demons is a special brand of evil, pun intended, and I’m not thrilled with the number of adults who seem to have let you down.” Aldrich definitely sounded cranky.

  “You can’t blame the Petersons, sir. All of us, we looked at the evidence we had. It made sense that demons were trying to take my friends, and we didn’t know how else to fight. So don’t blame Eric or Brian. All of us were muddling through, and part of that is because no one knows about jackass aliens.”

  Aldrich took a deep breath and seemed to let that soak in. Having officers listen to him was definitely a new experience in Tank’s book. “Are you obliquely blaming the US government for keeping this classified?”

  “If I knew what ‘oblique’ meant, maybe, sir. We just knew we had to keep fighting.”

  “The human body can’t go on forever, Tankersley. We wear down. And if we’re always in danger, we wear out. I’ve been worn down to nothing. Even John has had his days. The adults in your life should have known that.”

  Tank ignored the colonel’s comment in part because he couldn’t argue it. Instead he changed the subject. “Marie and Zhu need to know the truth, sir. They have to know they can walk away from this fight, and their genetics aren’t demonic. They think that being the children of demons means that the whole forces of hell will follow them wherever they go.”

  Pursing his lips, Aldrich seemed to think about that. “I’ll take it under advisement. Meanwhile, you have pushed yourself far beyond your reserves. We’re doing some simple recon and trying to get a feel for the field. I need you to stay here and recuperate.”

  “I didn’t feel worn out, sir, not until this morning,” Tank said by way of an apology. He wanted to be out there in the fight, but Aldrich was right that he felt so utterly exhausted he didn’t know how to get up. Oh, he could if an enemy came through the door, but even if there was an entire comic book convention eight feet outside his hotel door, he still wouldn’t find the energy to crawl out of bed. And for him, that was saying something.

  “And that’s the healthiest thing I’ve heard you say yet. I might not have to hate you after all.” Aldrich stood up and headed for the door.

  “Sir?”

  “Private?” Aldrich stood with a hand on the doorknob.

  Swallowing around the lump in his throat, Tank asked the one question he couldn’t have faced yesterday. “Did I have to shoot Roger?” Tank wanted the quick answer, the easy yes, the promise that he had done everything right and nothing was his fault. He wanted some reassurance that he hadn’t been tricked into killing his lover for no reason. Instead Aldrich seemed to take some time to think.

  “It’s hard to tell. The aliens are invested in this ridiculous cover, and my guess is they would have used technology to give him the equivalent of demonic powers. You might have stopped a mass murder. But I don’t know what the aliens had in mind, so I can’t give a definitive answer.”

  The pain settled in Tank’s gut.

  “I would have made the same call, though,” Aldrich added. “John would have. Black, Cooper, Washington—they all would have. Every soldier in my unit would have pulled that trigger, because Roger made a choice to stand on the wrong side of that ethical line, and that means that as a soldier you had an obligation to defend civilians.”

  Tank pressed his lips together. He wanted to beg Aldrich for some sort of promise that he was telling the truth.

  “
Look, Lev’s going to kill me and hide the body if I don’t let him in here, and I need to go check in with Major Sadler. I’ll see you tonight, Private.”

  With one final look as though waiting for Tank to panic about something else, Aldrich turned and headed out of the hotel room. However, before the door could close, Lev pushed it back open. Lev stood in the open doorway, glasses a little askew and face lined with worry. Tank could feel tears threaten again as he saw the concern on Lev’s face. Any lingering fears that Lev would hate him for lying evaporated the second he saw his lover.

  “Oh God, this is stupid,” Tank said as he raised a hand to wipe tears away. Lev came in, letting the door close behind him. While Tank was still trying to get his emotions back under control, Lev settled in on the bed, pulling Tank close in a desperate hug.

  Tank said, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you everything.”

  “No, I should have known. You didn’t lie about anything, even if you didn’t tell me anything either.” Lev’s arms tightened, and Tank hugged Lev back, holding tightly as his whole life seemed to crumble around him.

  “It’s okay,” Lev muttered over and over. Each time, Tank could feel the emotions rise and his tears force their way out, despite his every effort. “I promise it’s okay.” This time the tears came easier. For a man who didn’t like to cry, Tank felt as though it was all he could do anymore. Luckily Lev must not mind crying, snotty lovers, because he just held on even harder as Tank fell asleep again.

  TANK SIGHED his way to consciousness for the second time that day, stiffening when he felt a warm body under him.

  “Good morning.”

  Tank blinked and realized that Lev was in the bed, a book in hand, and Tank had managed to half sprawl over his lap. Crap. He’d fallen asleep crying. Again.

  “Alex, can I take ‘Embarrassing’ for three hundred?” Tank joked as he rolled away and rubbed his tired eyes.

  “Hey, you don’t need to be embarrassed. I’ve cried more than I really want to admit, and about half the time, I’ve cried on Clyde. For someone who claims to not know where to find an emotion, he’s better than most of my therapists.”

  Tank looked over his shoulder, bothered by the idea of Lev hurting enough to go to a therapist. “Dr. Therapist Colonel Aldrich?”

  Lev laughed. “Don’t say that to him.” With that, Lev turned serious. “When we were captured and on that gladiator ship, I cried on him enough that I really thought he was going to decertify me for field work. I felt pretty crazy, so I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d put that in my file.”

  “He’s not bad, but still, I should have talked to you.” Stones gathered in Tank’s stomach when he thought about how many times he’d let Lev make untrue assumptions. “And I definitely shouldn’t have stolen your card. I’m sorry I put you in the middle.”

  “Don’t worry about the card. Clyde is more upset at the actual security people who got conned by a teenager. And as far as the lying goes, I think you told me more than I was willing to hear.” Lev put the book on the side table and scooted down so he was lying next to Tank, his hand coming to rest on Tank’s hip. “Why don’t you tell me one story now, something true.”

  Tank had never talked to people about what he’d seen. His friends were there with him, and other people would have called him crazy. “I’ll tell you, if afterward you’ll tell me what you think really happened.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My stories are all full of demons, but they don’t really exist, do they?” That was the only logical conclusion, although it hurt to admit it because it made all the pain and sacrifice worthless. Tank would rather hold on to his illusions, but it was too damn late for that.

  “Probably not, although I’ve learned to avoid discounting the improbable.” Lev ran his hand over Tank’s side. “Deborah found evidence of a major incursion, something we call a hub. It’s where the aliens employ a large number of avatars and bring in more technology than usual in order to set up operations. They can’t exactly use their native currency to infiltrate Earth, so they’ll create hubs where they manipulate markets or steal money in order to fund their on-planet needs. I doubt New York has a hub and a demon invasion at the same time.”

  “Given my luck, it might,” Tank said. He wrapped his arm around Lev’s waist and held on tightly. “If I tell you a demon story, will you tell me what it sounds like from an alien-technology expert’s point of view?”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Lev said, his voice uncertain.

  “Please,” Tank pressed his forehead against Lev’s shoulder.

  “Whatever happened, it’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known. You acted on the evidence in front of you.”

  “Lev.” Tank left it there. He needed some truth in his world, something to push back against all the lies he’d lived for years.

  After a second, Lev sighed. “Fine. It’s a deal.”

  Tank squeezed Lev’s hand in gratitude before he started his story. “Marie’s father had decided to take out her support network, and she was best friends with….” Tank’s emotions built like a flood.

  “Ellie?” Lev guessed, his voice soft.

  Tank nodded. “Ellie had a real hate-on for spiders. We were at school after hours, working on a spell in the theater building, which was about the only place that had enough space for us to spread out. Then all these spiders were coming down the walls. We scattered. Mr. Peterson got a picture on his phone and sent it to his wife, and she said they were banana spiders.” Tank took a deep breath. “They were really deadly, so we fell back to the chemistry lab. Zhu created chemical bombs to throw at them, and Marie squashed them by the dozens. Roger, Ellie, and I mainly tried to keep the spiders off the other two. Mrs. Peterson found a spell, and Mr. Peterson and Zhu used stuff in the chemistry lab to cast it, and all the spiders turned to dust. Only the next day, a dozen kids got bitten. One lost this thumb, and three died. Mrs. Peterson said they must have been too far away for the spell to work.”

  “I didn’t think there were spiders that could kill that effectively.”

  “The doctor said they were especially venomous, and the hospital ran out of medicine because there were so many. New York hospitals don’t keep antivenom for banana spiders on their shelves.” Tank took a deep breath to hold back the rage and tears that wanted to come. “Why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Lev said as he held Tank tighter. “Maybe they were testing reaction times. Marie and Zhu seem to have genetic enhancements, and they could have been observing the results. Or maybe they wanted to see whether your group held together or scattered in the face of a phobia. We have psychologists who try to study the aliens based on their technology and what we’ve seen them do, but it’s all just speculation. No one has an answer, and Clyde won’t let a psychologist on the main team because he said that we can’t afford to get sidetracked by assumptions and conjecture.”

  Although Lev’s words had a lot of logic, that didn’t explain why the aliens would have left some of the spiders behind. “The aliens chose to kill most of those spiders, right? It wasn’t really a spell.”

  “It wasn’t. We’ve seen them inject a sort of nanobot into a small animal or insect. On a given signal, which we can’t isolate, the bot will somehow vaporize all liquids, leaving behind the dried portions of the body to collapse into dust. It’s like something Deborah said. Clarke’s Third Law says that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

  “That means they intentionally left some of the spiders un-nanobotted and free to bite innocent people.” Tank wanted to find one of those bastards and squeeze its head until its skull popped like a zit.

  “Or the signal failed, or some of the spiders had moved too far from the source of the signal. We don’t know. There are so many things that we just can’t know.” Lev lifted himself up on one elbow.

  Tank gave a long, shuddering sigh. “How fucked up is all this?”

&n
bsp; “Plenty,” Lev answered. “And I hate that you’ve been stuck in the middle of this war for so long. That does explain why you don’t act like a twenty-year-old. All this forced you to grow up fast.”

  “I don’t feel grown up at all,” Tank admitted. “I spent so much time running around and fighting that I missed all this stuff along the way. Mrs. Peterson and Zhu even had to modify a spell to help me cheat on the Regents exams just so I could graduate.” It felt strange to admit that to someone from outside the group. Tank closed his eyes and pressed his hands against them. “That means a fucking alien helped me cheat. An alien from another planet helped me cheat on a fucking Regents exam. How is that even logical?”

  “They’re maintaining an illusion.”

  “My head is going to explode.”

  “Don’t.” Lev kissed Tank’s temple. “It would make a terrible mess.”

  The joke startled a laugh out of Tank.

  “See? It’s already better.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s not,” Tank said, but the ring of pain around his chest had eased. “Tell me something about them, something real without all the demon stuff tacked on top.”

  Lev took a deep breath. “I always thought of the aliens as disinterested scientists. I could see something almost noble in them as I imagined them finding this young species and struggling to understand humans. I often misinterpret human motives, so I found comfort that a species that is clearly advanced technologically was left to perform crude experiments to try to understand people.” He stopped.

  Tank rolled to his side and shifted closer. “That makes sense.”

  “Yeah. Then we were in Regina, Canada, near the airport. Usually if you can find the main control room, the aliens will pack up and retreat. After all, it ruins the experiment when the mice look behind the mirror that’s hung on the side of the cage. We weren’t being particularly cautious. Two members of the security team held the outer door while Clyde and I went inside. I was so excited—there was tech there I hadn’t seen before, and I was anxious to start taking it apart.” Lev’s voice had a tremor to it, and he stopped.