Tap-Dancing the Minefields

by Lyn Gala

  “And I’m going to patch Zhu in through remote,” Sadler said. “If he’s seen this setup before, he might be able to make sense of whatever signals I can pick up.”

  Aldrich nodded.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  BEFORE LONG, Tank had entered the land of boredom. Usually he stood around with his finger up his nose as Ellie and Zhu figured out how to save the day, but watching Lev and Major Sadler drool over the readings on her computer was equally mind-numbing.

  Then Aldrich brought his weapon up, and Tank swung around, prepared for an attack. John appeared at the end of the hall.

  “All clear?” Aldrich asked when John came into the room.

  “Got a few locked doors. Can’t get through them. How about you?”

  “The equipment may or may not spew poison gas or spiders,” Aldrich said.

  John grunted.

  “I was hoping you were going to insist we all leave. Those two are caught up in all the sciency stuff, and that one—” Here Aldrich poked a thumb in Tank’s direction. “—doesn’t have the sense God gave an Afghan hound.”

  “A hound?” Tank blurted out. He added a quick “sir” on the end.

  “If you have to ask, you’ve clearly never owned one,” Aldrich said before he turned his attention back to John. “But you’re supposed to be practical. I don’t want to be the only one suggesting we run for the hills.”

  John shrugged. “If there’s gas, it could be connected to the air ducts. Running won’t help much unless we get everyone out of the entire building and seal it off. And then we couldn’t ever open it again, not without getting people out of the immediate area. Some on the ships talked about poisons that could kill everyone. You would have to evacuate all of New York.”

  Aldrich’s look was incredulous. “I don’t think the general will sign off on evacuating New York City.”

  “Then here is as good a place to wait as any.” John didn’t sound too concerned. “Do we have someone who can open the locked doors I found?”

  “FBI should have some equipment on-site.” Aldrich was already reaching for his radio.

  “Do you think the locked doors are hiding something dangerous?” Tank asked. And that would be stupid. Of course they expected danger, seeing as how this was the hideout of an alien invader—which actually sounded worse than the lair of a demonic prince.

  John raised a single eyebrow. “Could be. People lock up what they value. But Earth humans value shit like office supplies, so it’s hard to tell.”

  Ten minutes later, the FBI showed up with the battering ram. An agent delivered it to John, looked quizzically at John’s sword, then headed back to his unit.

  Major Sadler stood up. “Sir, should you call for some backup?”

  Aldrich gave her a skeptical look. “To free office supplies? Do you really hate me enough to want to make me the butt of all the jokes on base?”

  “No, sir, but you might find something dangerous.”

  “Sure, like toner cartridges. Face it, with this much drama, any aliens are long gone. And the best I’m going to get is a henchman hiding behind a copy machine.”

  “A henchman can still shoot you, sir,” Sadler said in a flat tone.

  “Aw, Sadler, I didn’t know you cared,” Colonel Aldrich teased.

  Sadler stared at him blankly for several seconds. “I don’t, sir. But if you get yourself killed or disabled, I have to do your paperwork.”

  “There’s my beautifully sadistic secondin-command. And people wonder why I fight to keep you around.”

  “Sir, just be careful.”

  “I’ll keep the old man out of trouble,” John said with a nasty grin in Aldrich’s direction. “Tank should come, learn to clear areas.”

  Aldrich’s expression immediately turned sour. “Let him watch the hall.” Without another word, Aldrich turned and headed out. John looked over and gave Tank a shrug before he followed.

  Major Sadler told Tank, “No one likes to go into the field with someone who’s undertrained. The guys on base will teach you clearing procedures and get you trained. It’s nothing personal.”

  Lev finally looked up from his computer. “Right. None of Clyde’s shitty reactions have been personal. It’s all just business.” He finished with a loud snort that made his opinion pretty clear.

  Sadler touched her earpiece. “Copy that. I’ll get him.” She looked at Tank. “Zhu wants you on channel Charlie-Seven.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Tank fumbled with the radio until Sadler finally plucked it out of his hand and entered the right code.

  “We’ll also get you training on our communication procedures as soon as we can break you of the habit of going AWOL.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tank said. He deserved that. “Zhu, did you need me?”

  There was a long pause before Zhu answered, “Yeah. I need you to give me real-time callouts of the colors on the display.” His voice had that distant, dreamy quality that usually meant he was so deep into thinking about something that petty issues like reality didn’t matter.

  “Ma’am?” Tank asked Sadler. It seemed stupid to wait for permission to help out a friend, but basic training had taught him to have a higher tolerance for stupid.

  “Do what you have to, but don’t touch anything,” Sadler ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am. Zhu, which row do you want to start on?”

  “Left.”

  “Got it.” Tank immediately called out the series of colors. Each time the colors flashed, Tank called out the new ones as fast as he could. He could imagine Zhu with his gaze on the code as it flowed across the screen. He would scratch notes on paper without glancing down. It was a familiar scene, but in the past Zhu had never been able to make sense of the codes.

  But back then the Army hadn’t taught him about alien tech. Tank’s voice was rough and his throat hurt before Zhu finally said, “Okay, got it.”

  Tank let out a relieved breath and grabbed his water bottle.

  “Oh, we have a problem,” Zhu said.

  “‘The equipment is going to turn to dust’ sort of problem, or a poison-gas problem?” Tank asked as fear wrapped around his stomach.

  “A pea soup problem,” Zhu said.

  “Oh, fuck.” Tank’s heart pounded so hard that he could feel his blood pressure rise.

  “Private?” Sadler demanded.

  “Um, pea soup. When green fluids and yellow fluids mix, things tend to blow up,” Tank explained.

  “Blow up?” Sadler didn’t even ask for an explanation before she was on the radio with the colonel. “Sir, we have potential explosives on-site.”

  Tank couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, but Sadler looked at him. “Is this an imminent risk or a possibility?”

  “Zhu? How sure are you and how long do we have?” Tank asked.

  “There’s no way to be certain without testing my hypothesis, and since my hypothesis is that you will blow up in about forty-three minutes, I won’t be certain for forty-four minutes.”

  Tank had a lot of experience with Zhu speak. “He’s way too certain, and the countdown is at forty minutes.”

  “What countdown?” Sadler looked at her computer, and Lev leaned over her shoulder to peer at her laptop screen. Just then Aldrich came running into the room.

  “Sitrep!” he called.

  Sadler answered. “I don’t have anything more than you heard from Zhu and Private Tankersley. I can’t interpret the code I’m getting from this console. Zhu, can you walk me through your analysis?”

  “In less than forty minutes? No,” Zhu said.

  Tank looked around. John came wandering in and tossed the two-man battering ram to one side like it was a tinker toy. A modified human was exactly what Tank needed.

  “We need to rip the backs off the consoles and check the fluid conduits. If there’s a code for pea soup in the signal, that means that somewhere a yellow conduit and a green one are getting close to each other. When they meet, it’s going to blow up.”

 
“None of the fluids are explosive,” Lev said. “The yellow is a common fluorine source. It will cause metals to break down, and it’s used as part of the ship’s recycling functions as well as to reinforce the bony structures. It’s dangerous enough that I threaten to fire anyone who contaminates or breaks a yellow line, but it’s corrosive, not explosive.”

  A band tightened around Tank’s heart. He didn’t want Lev to believe him blindly, but a little faith would be nice.

  “So no explosion?” Aldrich asked.

  Over the radio Zhu said, “Yes, explosion. If I had more than forty minutes, I could explain the code to Major Sadler so she understood it.”

  Sadler narrowed her eyes. “I have fifteen years of advanced mathematics and a doctorate in programming. I can probably follow your explanation.”

  “No, you can’t,” Zhu said ruthlessly. “I am only tracking that signal because some of the mathematics is more beautiful. That’s where I’m focusing my search.”

  “More beautiful?” Sadler sounded unhappy.

  “The placement of primes in sets that create geometric patterns within a three-dimensional matrix is beautiful, but I don’t have time to walk you through it. Tank, find the damn pea soup.”

  Tank had listened to that voice for too long to ignore it now. When Zhu got that edge of panic, the time to debate had ended. Tank pulled his knife and shoved it in the crack where two parts of the console met.

  “Whoa. Hey, sticking sharp objects in alien tech is not a good idea,” Lev protested. “Clyde doesn’t even want us touching buttons.”

  Tank started pulling at the console cover. “If the membranes weaken until a green substance meets the yellow, you’re going to have goo that melts tables and faces and concrete—but that won’t matter if the explosion is large enough. Last time I didn’t stop the flow. We blew up the basement of Roger’s apartment building. And we were tinkering with something the size of french bread.”

  “Good times,” Zhu said over the radio. “Have you found it?”

  “Working on it,” Tank said as he yanked harder. His knife slipped, sending him stumbling back.

  “It’s corrosive?” Lev’s voice had an odd tone.

  “Oh, no. That’s the face you make when you just realized something,” Aldrich said.

  “Most of the green lines are organics—nutrient lines and bioregulatory molds and cultures. They’re dark green.”

  “No, we’re looking for light, streaky green,” Tank said.

  Lev came around to Tank’s side of the console. “We have to get this off. Now.”

  “Lev?” Aldrich’s tone grew sharp. “What aren’t you sharing with the class?” Aldrich signaled John to help. Tank had seen Marie rip alien tech open often enough that he knew John would have a lot more success than the rest of them, so he stepped back.

  Sure enough, John shoved his knife in the crack and twisted it to get his fingers inside. Then he ripped a whole chunk of cover off, exposing twisted lines of fluids that controlled the panel.

  Lev explained. “A lot of the basic ship fluids use the same lines. When the colors change, we often take samples, and one time we did see a viscous and mottled green line. It had antimony trifluoride, but the green came from the fact the ship pumped it through the organic lines.”

  “Oh, fuck,” Sadler said slowly.

  Aldrich looked around. “Okay, would someone like to explain this to the people who had a life in high school and were playing football instead of memorizing the periodic table?”

  “We need chalk. We always turned it into a paste made with blessed water, but I’m guessing unblessed chalk will work,” Tank said.

  “Chalk won’t work,” Lev said. “Not unless we have a truckload. Deborah?” He looked at Sadler.

  She was on her radio. “Reed, grab as much acidic neutralizer as we have in the van and get up here, stat.”

  “Still waiting for the explanation,” Aldrich said. Tank dropped to his knees and stuck his hands in the exposed guts of the machine, carefully holding back the draped lines so he could search for yellow or light green.

  John ripped open another machine, and Lev dropped down to search the lines. “Simple,” Lev said. “If you take antimony trifluoride and add fluorine, you get the strongest acid humanity knows about. It can corrode anything, including the containment barriers the ship uses around unstable elements.”

  “What are we talking about? Are we talking about blowing up this room and the computers or destroying the city?”

  Lev looked up at Aldrich. “You’re the one who likes to point out that we can’t understand alien psychology. How the hell would I know? Tank, how are you doing?”

  Tank kept his gaze focused on the tech in front of him. “Three-quarters through, but I don’t have light green. I’ve found a large yellow line, though.”

  “Tell me what to look for, and I’ll help,” Colonel Aldrich offered.

  “You can’t,” Lev said. “You might miss the line because you wouldn’t recognize an organic green line from a contaminated trifluoride line.”

  “There aren’t many green lines here,” Tank said. “If green is nutrient, someone stopped feeding these computers.”

  “Which probably explains why they turn to dust if we don’t get them to the ship, but right now I’m more concerned about them blowing up or corroding away the seal on a container of poison gas.”

  “I hate aliens,” Aldrich muttered.

  “How many of these do you want opened?” John asked.

  “All of them,” Lev said. “Just try to avoid touching any lines, because I don’t want to blow up faster.”

  “Zhu, talk to me,” Tank said. He should feel better about having so many brilliant people as backup, but the lack of Marie’s complaints and Zhu’s endless explanations and Roger’s descriptions of all the ways they were going to die made him feel on edge. The Incursion Forces weren’t really Tank’s team—not the way Zhu and Marie were.

  “I see a diminishing code,” Zhu said. “I think that’s the countdown, and you have thirty-six minutes remaining. I also have a secondary code here that might be another computer. But if Major Sadler’s lesson yesterday in alien languages is right, I’m reading damage reports on a propulsion drive. Could someone’s spaceship be broken?”

  “Lovely,” Aldrich said in a sarcastic tone. Tank hoped that meant the colonel was going to make Zhu sign lots of nondisclosure forms rather than shove him in a jail cell for knowing way more government secrets than he should.

  “I studied the systems for years in order to figure out concepts like on and off, and Zhu is reading damage reports less than twenty-four hours after getting a basic primer in alien code,” Sadler said with a sigh. “Private Tankersley, I think I might know where your inferiority complex came from.”

  “Got it!” Tank yelled. The green line was hidden behind a bony support with a honeycomb structure. Just below it was a wide trunk line filled with a yellowish fluid.

  “Where?” Lev dropped down beside Tank.

  “There.” Tank held the obscuring lines to one side.

  “Good eye. Okay, we have to redirect yellow or green, or we have to run like hell. I’ll trace the green line, you take yellow.”

  “On it.” Tank studied the slow-moving yellow fluid. He couldn’t even tell the direction of the flow. He shifted to lie on his stomach so he could be eye-to-conduit with the fluid and then rested his hand on the fleshy membrane. West. The flow was west. Tank started to inch his way east, searching for a way to divert or cut off the yellow line.

  “Major!” someone called. “I have it.” Tank recognized Sadler’s second, but he kept his gaze on the line he was studying.

  “Excellent! Set it up over here.” Sadler stepped over Tank’s legs. “If Lev tells you to go, spray all of it in this area.”

  “But this is enough corrosive alkaline to irreparably damage the equipment.”

  “We could have a superacid leak—so you could drop all that into the control system, and it stil
l might not be enough.” Sadler sounded stressed, but weirdly Tank had found his zone. He had one job, and he knew exactly how to do it. Alien lock picking required diverting lines, so he’d had a lot of experience.

  Sadler moved to Aldrich’s side. “Sir, you may want to advise the general that if the console creates a superacid, we have very few options for containment.”

  “And then he’s going to ask what we’re trying to contain, and we don’t know. There’s a chance that this is how the aliens signal the equipment to turn to dust, and all this flailing is about preventing a recycling signal.”

  “Doubt it,” Lev said. “Superacids react with the environment, so I would have noticed if the aliens used them to trigger disintegration.”

  “You couldn’t have let me have my fantasies, could ya?”

  “Should we even be here?” Sadler’s second edged toward the exit.

  Tank thought about all the FBI agents in the building and all the people in the surrounding area who were going to work. They were complaining about the price of coffee, and gossiping about relationships, and they had no idea that an alien device might or might not explode—that it might or might not release a poison that would kill them. None of them knew the danger they were in, and Tank’s stomach curled in horror.

  “I’ve identified where it comes into the console, but I don’t have any way to bleed the line.” Normally Tank could divert fluid to another channel, but there weren’t any matching yellow lines anywhere near. And clamping off conduits usually led to burst lines and spraying chemicals.

  “Shit. Me either,” Lev said. “Okay, options. We could figure out what it was supposed to corrode.”

  “That would be below the yellow line.” The rules of gravity meant the acid would drip down. Unfortunately, the yellow fluid line was wide enough to prevent access to below. “Can we block the acid?” Tank asked.

  “If we could neutralize it, but we can’t. We have to stop the flow.”

  Tank sat up. “Zhu, you said you had diagnostics. Can you diagnose a problem on this console?”