Tap-Dancing the Minefields

by Lyn Gala

“If there were a problem, probably,” Zhu answered.

  “I’m going to tell you when the console has a blockage. You look for code.”

  Lev slowly smiled. “You are a genius.”

  “You have low standards.” Tank put his palm on the wide yellow line and pressed down. “Now.” He held the line shut for several seconds as the membrane stretched and pressure built. “And release,” he said as he let the fluid flow again. They didn’t dare get this aggressive with the green line, since it was slowly melting, but hopefully Zhu could track the coding before Tank created a chemical spill.

  “Try again,” Zhu said. Three more times, and then Zhu exclaimed, “Got you, you little shit. Whoever coded this is a sadist, but I have control of that line.”

  Since he was out of good ideas, Tank looked at Lev. Lev had his glasses propped on top of his head, and he was frowning. If he didn’t have answers, Tank might suggest fleeing in terror as a viable option.

  “We have to shut down the yellow fluid.”

  “How?” Zhu asked.

  Lev looked at Tank, but Tank shrugged. He’d used his quota of competence for the day. Lev blew out a long breath. “Okay, start sending commands, and we’ll see what happens.”

  For long seconds the radio was silent. Tank could imagine the expression of horror on Zhu’s face. “What could happen is that I could trigger an explosion. I could split a line. I could blow up the console. Do you want me to detail all the things that could go wrong if I start sending random commands to an alien device?” Zhu’s voice took on a shrill edge.

  “He’s right,” Sadler said. “This is dangerous.”

  Lev shrugged. “How do you think I got off the alien ship? I started poking everything I could see until I understood the reactions I got.”

  “You also got electrocuted and poisoned a couple of times,” Aldrich pointed out. “You do remember the blue rash, right?”

  Lev winced. “Too well. But that doesn’t mean we let aliens set off a bomb in the middle of New York. Zhu, if I yell ‘stop,’ stop.”

  “I’m questioning your intelligence,” Zhu warned.

  “Fair enough. Now pick a command and send it through. And track what commands you’re sending,” Lev said. Zhu started muttering, and Tank scooted back. He needed to observe the line, but he didn’t want to get sprayed in the face.

  Trial and error only caused four near disasters before the flow of yellow fluid slowed to a trickle.

  “So we’ve been downgraded from superacid to simple chemical spill.” Lev flopped backward and leaned against a piece of the console John had ripped off. He was pale, and his hand shook a little when he reached for his glasses. “That was more exciting than I anticipated.” Tank rested his hand on Lev’s knee. When Lev smiled at him, Tank’s racing heart started to slow.

  “We good?” Aldrich asked.

  “I know how to contain these chemicals,” Lev said. “So we’re not totally out of the woods, and I don’t know what we have below us that the acid would have set free, but we aren’t in danger of immediately blowing up.” Lev rested his own hand on top of Tank’s. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “Yeah, you could have,” Tank said.

  “Doubt it.” Lev looked up at Aldrich, and Tank could sense the silent communication between the two men.

  Just when Tank’s racing heart started to resume a more normal pace, Tank noticed John. He had his weapon aimed at the corridor, and he was moving toward the door. His body language screamed predator, and Tank scrambled to his feet.

  “Trouble,” John said, even though the corridor on the other side of the glass walls appeared quiet.

  Aldrich brought his own weapon up, and Tank drew his sidearm. “Reed, Lev, get to cover,” Aldrich ordered. “Sadler, with me. Tankersley, hold the rear.”

  Lev shook his head. “I can’t retreat. This is still a chemical bomb waiting to go off. By preventing the acid reaction, we ensured that we had the ability to handle the spill, but this line is still going to split. I need to be here to neutralize the chemicals.”

  “Lev,” Aldrich said darkly.

  “I’m not getting us blown up. Go, do your thing and shoot somebody.”

  Aldrich’s jaw was bulging from gritting his teeth so hard.

  “I can cover them,” Sadler said. “Private, take north side.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Tank moved to the far console.

  “Don’t let anyone end up dead, and that includes yourself,” Aldrich ordered her.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, sir.”

  “I’m too fucking old for this,” Aldrich complained, but he trotted after John.

  Tank twitched as he realized the glass walls meant that the only protection Lev and Reed had was the console itself. They were in a horrible position. Worse, Tank felt completely inadequate to defend them. Luckily Sadler seemed at ease with her large automatic weaponry.

  A burst of weapons fire echoed down the hall, startling Tank badly enough that he almost fired his own weapon. “Ma’am?” Tank asked Sadler. Tank couldn’t see anything.

  “Hold position. Lev, if I tell you to get to cover, do it. I don’t care if the damn console explodes,” Sadler ordered.

  “You’ll care if it kills us all,” Lev answered, but he pulled his sidearm out and laid it next to him as he worked.

  Aldrich backed into view, firing at something farther down the corridor. “Keep cover. This guy is not disintegrating,” Aldrich yelled. He kept backing up, firing in short bursts as he did. Before a minute had passed, Mr. Chow appeared at the end of the hallway, his white hair and calm expression completely at odds with the alien gun in his hand.

  Chow fired, and Tank ducked before a bubble of heat pushed through the air. The glass walls all shattered, leaving tiny chunks of glass falling to the ground in uneven lines. Sadler stood and fired her weapon. Then Chow took a few steps forward, and Aldrich stepped out from a side corridor and did the same. When Tank opened fire, Chow finally took a step back, the shield around him flaring in brilliant colors. After a time, Aldrich’s weapon fell silent, and Tank could see him moving to reload.

  With only two of them attacking, the shield shimmered with colors, but the effect was more of an oil slick on water than the brilliant shades from the three-sided assault. Tank took his finger off the trigger when he spotted movement behind Chow. John swooped in from another side passage, and the swoop-swish of his sword cut through the air. He swung hard and fast, but his momentum vanished as the blade hit the shield.

  “Get back!” Aldrich yelled before he opened fire again, this time on the overhead lights. They exploded into sparks, and John jumped backward. Tank didn’t understand the point of that move until the sparks hit Chow’s shield, and suddenly a small electrical storm gathered between the top of Chow’s shield and the broken wiring of the overhead lights. The flashes gathered around his head, and his white hair stood on end.

  Tank took cover behind the console, but John stood there completely exposed to the alien weaponry.

  “What do you think your weapons can do?” Chow asked, his voice amused.

  Aldrich answered for John. “Destroy that machine you’re driving around, for one.” Aldrich opened fire for a third time, and the flashes from the bullet strikes joined the lightning storm so that Chow seemed trapped in the middle of a brilliant spotlight. Then the shield flared and the light vanished. Chow flew backward as bullets slammed into him. He slid down the hall, leaving streaks of blood on the tile floor. Only then did Aldrich stop firing.

  When Tank took a step forward, Sadler ordered, “Hold position.” But John was moving closer, and the hairs on Tank’s arms stood on end.

  Slowly Chow got to his feet. Blood was sluggishly leaking from dozens of holes, but his expression was as calm and amused as ever. Tank knew the real alien was somewhere else—somewhere safe—and was driving Chow’s body the way a person might play with a remote-controlled car. That was even creepier than the idea of demons.

  Chow looked
at John. “Another one—more like Marie than my Zhu. Are you from the ships, or does another create altered humans?”

  John lifted his sword and seemed poised to swing, but Aldrich gave a sharp whistle to stop him. “Since you’re in a talkative mood,” Aldrich said to Chow, “we’ll make a deal. You ask a question and we ask a question. I’ll start. What the hell are you doing here?”

  Chow slowly angled his body so he was squared off against Aldrich. “That is a fool’s question. You have found my operation, so my answer would be redundant. Is your colleague from Earth or the ships?”

  A voice behind Tank startled him, and he swung around to find Lev stepping into the open. “You know we were on the ships,” Lev said. He tried moving toward the action, but Tank left cover to stand in front of Lev, blocking him from getting any closer. The problem was that if Chow fired, Tank wasn’t sure his body would be enough to protect Lev.

  “Lev,” Aldrich said darkly.

  Lev ignored the warning tone and kept talking. “It makes sense. They don’t give us information we don’t already have. The avatar wouldn’t engage the FBI, but he would confront us. And he just told us there are alien ships, so he must know we already knew about them.”

  “Which didn’t tell him we had been on one until you said that,” Aldrich pointed out.

  “And now I know you have a way to escape a ship, making it more likely this one came from the ships,” Chow said as he slowly looked over toward John. “Information should be purchased, should it not? Ask your question.”

  Aldrich stared at Chow, but Tank had a sudden thought. Zhu and Marie had originally disliked each other—Chow had ordered Zhu to stay away from her at all costs because her father posed a very real threat. Roger and Tank had gone along with that because Zhu had believed his father was trying to protect him from a dangerous demon. Zhu rarely misjudged a person’s motives, but if Chow had been telling the truth, then he hadn’t been working with the aliens who had created modified humans like Marie and John and the gladiators. He’d been trying to hide Zhu from them.

  “Were your experiments sanctioned?” Tank blurted out. The colonel might kill him later for jumping in the middle, but Tank wanted to know. Sure enough, the colonel glanced back with enough venom in his gaze to make it clear he was going to make Tank pay for that interruption.

  Chow tilted his head to the side and pursed his lips. “Sanctioned is a human term.”

  Tank modified his question. “Would other aliens want humans modified like Zhu?”

  Chow smiled. “No species is unified in its preferences.”

  “Would any member of your species approve?” Tank asked.

  Chow gave Tank a strange look. “They fail to see the beauty I have seen.”

  “You have no intention of giving us answers,” John said with disgust.

  “No, I do not,” Chow agreed. John slashed with his sword, and a line of bright red opened on Chow’s chest as the bottom of his shirt fell away. Blood poured from the vicious wound. For a second he stood there with a demonically calm expression. Then he turned to dust. It was as if someone had carved a Chow statue out of ash until his body started collapsing inward. It hit the floor, and dust flew back up into the air. Even the trails of blood had turned into streaks of gray.

  “Never trust one of those bastards,” John said. “I’m going to double-check the other rooms.”

  “Wait, we’ll….” Aldrich sighed. John was already gone. When he decided to run, he was terrifyingly fast. No wonder Tank had been willing to buy the lie about demons and half demons. Modified humans didn’t move like humans.

  “I remember the days when people listened to me,” Aldrich said sadly.

  “I still listen, sir,” Sadler offered.

  “Yeah, yeah. I just miss the days of being a real colonel who could give orders and have my unit follow them.”

  “Sir, you told me you hated people who blindly follow orders.”

  “Blindly follow others’ orders,” Aldrich said. “My orders, on the other hand, are always logical and reasonable.”

  “Of course, sir,” Sadler said, managing to sound as if she was saying exactly the opposite.

  “Chow really is a weird one, even for an alien,” Lev said. “Why is all the tech still here? He had to have noticed we were taking the consoles apart. Why didn’t he trigger the self-destruct so that all we recovered would be a pile of semi-rare elements in dust form? Hell, for that matter, why didn’t he trigger the bomb early?”

  Aldrich took up position at the door, weapon trained toward the pile of Chow dust, but he asked in an aggrieved tone, “Did you just jinx us? Why did you have to ask that?”

  “Because it doesn’t make sense,” Lev said a little louder. “I mean, I’m grateful because this is the largest cache of alien technology we’ve captured since we found the ship, but aliens have always destroyed large equipment rather than let us keep it. The ship was the only large technology cache we’ve ever captured, and the odds are that no aliens survived its crash long enough to trigger a self-destruct. Why let us have all this?”

  “Yeah, and now I’m going to worry about it. Can’t you keep your logic to yourself and let me enjoy my victory for one minute?”

  “Go on. Enjoy,” Lev said flatly. Then he made a production of checking his watch. “I’ll ask again in sixty seconds.”

  “Yeah, well, you ruined the mood. I’m going to call the general and tell him that we’re pretty sure this stuff isn’t going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight and we need a lot of grunts to move a lot of equipment.” Colonel Aldrich sighed before he pulled out his cell phone. “If I have to call the general much more today, he’s going to block my number.” With that he stepped out into the hallway. Tank settled with his back to the machine and his attention on the passage outside the shattered glass wall. He noticed that Sadler did the same, leaving Lev to geek out over the computer all alone.

  “This is amazing,” Lev said. “I mean, the ship systems are great, but having two complete computer setups with separate functions will allow us to draw more conclusions and generalize more engineering principles.”

  “Do I need to get jealous of that laptop?” Tank asked.

  Lev looked up and graced Tank with a brilliant smile. “Never, but hopefully you’ll be understanding when the computer and I want a little extra quality time to work on these readings.”

  Tank smiled at him before turning all his attention to the corridor. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Major Sadler giving him a strange expression.

  “What?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Nothing. Just focus on the job, okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Tank focused on the corridor and not the way that shadows seemed to reach for him and every footfall sounded threatening. He wanted to run to Lev and hold on for dear life, because he could have lost Lev. But Lev had a job to do; he didn’t have time to babysit Tank and his neuroses.

  “Whoa. Weird,” Sadler said. “Zhu, are you reading this data?”

  “I’m the one who opened the file.”

  Lev moved over to Sadler’s computer, and Tank watched out of the corner of his eye. “Holy shit.” Lev looked at Tank.

  All the hairs on Tank’s arms stood at attention. “What?”

  Lev had lost some of the color from his face, and he focused on the computer without answering. “Holy shit,” he repeated softer.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  TANK SAT at the bar and stared at his beer. He was a stereotype. The soldier finished the fight and then went to the bar to drink, except for the part where Tank still hadn’t gotten through his first beer. He’d ordered it on a whim, figuring he’d get carded and have to switch to pop, but apparently this dive bar was so divey that the police never checked for underage drinking. He was sort of sorry about that, because Chow’s computer had coughed up information that had shaken Tank enough that he was fairly sure drinking was a bad idea.

  Going AWOL from Picatinny had been an equally
bad idea, but Tank hadn’t wanted to deal with people, and he knew that too many people with too many questions were going to chase him down if he stayed on base.

  Tank eyed the group of men in the corner and wondered if he should call the cops before or after they tried jumping him. They were definitely going to try, although Tank was harder to take down than most people assumed.

  The bartender interrupted Tank’s funk. “Maybe you should take off now,” he said with a nod toward the same group Tank had noticed.

  Tank stared at him blankly. He tried channeling his inner Colonel Aldrich, but he doubted he had even half the cold glower that man could muster. Tank didn’t even try to imitate John—no way could he pull that off.

  “Or not. Your funeral.” The bartender went back to wiping down the cracked bar top. One of the corner guys stood and started moving toward Tank. Tank turned and let his jacket fall open enough to show the fucking automatic weapon he had in there. John’s rules about always being armed came in handy when you decided to go AWOL. Again.

  Tank loudly announced, “I’ve had the world’s shittiest day, and I’m pretty sure my raging case of PTSD would make a self-defense claim pretty easy, but I haven’t checked with my psychiatrist about that, so I’m a little iffy on the legalities of mass casualties.” The guy slowly backed away from the bar, his eyes huge, and only then did it occur to Tank that he might just be a normal guy ordering beers for his buddies. Just because they looked like a gang of drug-using thugs didn’t mean they couldn’t be harmless drug-using day laborers.

  The guys looked at each other for a second, then started talking loudly about other plans as they moved toward the door, their bravado front and center. A couple of the other drinkers gave Tank an odd look before heading for the door themselves. “You’re bad for business,” the bartender complained. Tank waited for the guy to throw him out, but instead he took a small box out from under the counter and opened it to show off a variety of drugs. “Want some? First hit on the house.”

  “Drugs and weaponry. Not really a good mix.”

  “You have a gun and alcohol,” the bartender said. Tank studied his glass without answering. After a second the bartender took his supplies down to the other end where it was darker and laid himself a couple of lines on a metal tray.