by Lyn Gala
The door opened, and John walked inside as the bartender snorted his second line. Tank cringed. Here came the big lecture followed by the scrubbing of latrines and the long training sessions that would lead to much pain. Tank had it coming for taking off. Colonel Aldrich followed John, and that was just the cherry on the shit sundae. Aldrich meant that whatever was going to happen would probably be a little more official.
John sat down on the seat closest to Tank, his eyes staring at the shelf behind the bar.
“Barkeep, one beer,” Aldrich called out.
For a second the guy stared at nothing, probably enjoying the first rush of the drugs.
“Nice place,” Aldrich said sarcastically. The bartender finally shook himself out of his daze.
“House tap?”
“Anything bottled,” Aldrich said, “and then we’ll pay you to get lost. John, give the guy some money.”
John frowned as if confused, but he pulled out a wad of bills and tossed them on the counter. “Is that enough?”
The bartender grabbed for the money at the same time as Tank. Tank got a few stray bills, while the bartender clutched the rest to his chest. “Yeah. That’s totally enough. I’ll just lock the door. You have the place to yourself. Just go out the back and push the door closed behind you.” The bartender started shoving money into his pockets while Tank returned a few of the hundred dollar bills he’d saved.
“Too much?” John asked.
“Not if you were trying to bribe someone at a swanky place,” Aldrich said. “Around here, one of those probably would have worked.”
John nodded as though making a point of remembering that for the future.
“So….” Aldrich fell silent.
“I know you’re here to yell at me about running off. Just get it over with. Unless you plan to add a second case of desertion to my official charges. If you do, I think the jail time is enough, so no yelling necessary.” Tank swirled the beer in his glass and watched the foam cling to the sides of the semiclean mug.
“No need. Lev offered to give you the tongue-lashing to end all tongue-lashings just as soon as we could find you,” Aldrich said with a sadistic smile. Then he took a drink of his beer.
“How did you find me?” Tank asked.
Aldrich shrugged. “Fool me by going AWOL once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me for not supergluing a tracking device to your ass, given your habit of disappearing from places you should not be able to escape from. I’m half tempted to send you to an Army prison or two just to drive the officers insane when you keep turning up missing.”
Tank snorted. “I’m not that good.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” Aldrich said.
“He’s not,” John answered before Tank could. “He doesn’t see that he has real talent.”
Tank swung around on his stool. “Oh, no. No, do not say that. I am not like Zhu or Marie or you. I am just normal me. Normal human George Tankersley, nothing to see here.” Tank didn’t care if Mr. Chow’s computer had genetic and biographical information on him going back to his birth. Nope. It didn’t matter that an alien was tracking him or had arranged for his mother to get a super-discounted, rent-controlled apartment in the same school district with Zhu Chow.
John raised his eyebrows. “Are you saying I’m not normal?” His voice had a deadly calm to it that sent a shiver down Tank’s spine.
“No, that’s not what I said, or not what I meant to say or even imply, because you scare the shit out of me in an ‘I’m really glad he’s on our side’ sort of way. Someone just stop me from talking now.” Tank put his head down on the bar and immediately regretted it when his forehead stuck. When he sat up again, Colonel Aldrich was looking at him as though he had grown a new head, and John actually looked amused.
“How much have you had to drink, Tankersley?” Aldrich asked.
Tank used his finger and thumb to measure the distance from the top of the glass to the level of the beer. He held up his hand, showing about three-quarters of an inch. “That much.”
Aldrich snorted. “You’re a real drinker there, Tankersley.”
“I don’t want to turn into my father.”
“Funny you should bring that up.” Aldrich’s voice held no emotion, and Tank’s stomach sank.
“Sir?”
“All tests show that your DNA is completely unaltered, no alien tinkering at all, and since your father’s DNA is part of the New York Database because of his conviction, we had the doctors run it.”
“And?” Maybe Tank’s father had been some anti-Zhu. Some aliens might have devolved him into a drunken, bigoted moron who spent more time in jail than out. That actually made some sense. “Was his DNA screwed with?”
“No,” Aldrich said slowly. “But he’s not your father either, not biologically, anyway.”
Tank’s brain whited out. He had absolutely no way to even process that information.
Aldrich just kept talking. “Lev and Zhu both wanted to come talk to you about this. Hell, Captain Hoffer even wanted to come and tell you, but I said that all of them would be too sympathetic.” Aldrich stood up and walked around the bar to get his own bottle of beer since the bartender was gone. “Want one?” he asked John.
“Stuff tastes like piss that’s gone sour,” John said. Tank agreed, but right now he was still stuck on his father not being his father.
“What? Did you think I hadn’t earned any sympathy? This is kinda big.”
Aldrich opened his beer and leaned back against a shelf of dusty bottles. “Tankersley, think of all the shitty things you’ve seen in your life, of all the people who’ve had their lives ripped apart because aliens treated them with all the respect of a lab rat. Do you really think this even hits the radar of injustice compared to all that? Besides, he’s a horrible human being. You should be glad you aren’t related to the ass.”
“But….” All that was true, but Tank ran out of words to express how twisted up he felt about it all.
“You haven’t even seen him since you were six, but Lev or the others would come in here and convince you to get all worked up.”
“I have a right to get a little worked up.”
“A little, maybe.” Aldrich took a swig of beer. “A lot, nope.”
“I don’t know who supplied the DNA for me on either side,” John said. “Aliens might have spliced several different people together to make me. Don’t really know. I figure there’s a record of it somewhere up on the ship, but I can’t say I want to know. I killed plenty in the challenge ring, and I don’t need to know if any of them shared my genes.”
And now Tank felt like he really didn’t have a right to complain.
Aldrich put his beer down. “Look. None of this is fair, but when you land in the middle of these alien plots, fairness goes right out the window.”
“But I’m not supposed to be in the middle. I’m plot adjacent. I’m the nobody who just got caught up because I’m not bright enough to stay out of it. Ask Mr. Peterson.”
“I don’t trust Peterson’s judgment on shit,” Aldrich said coldly. “And anyone who thinks you’re not bright clearly has a few brain cells that haven’t grown in yet. Maybe you suck at school, but in over sixty years, no one has ever figured out how to escape my base. You aren’t exactly the first person who stumbled into this plot and ended up involuntarily detained for a while. We’ve had special-ops troops and world-class scientists up there, and none of them figured out how to get out. This ‘normal’ story you’re trying to tell yourself is bullshit.”
“So you think I’m another one of Chow’s experiments?” Tank didn’t know what he wanted Aldrich to say. Growing up, there were lots of times he’d wished he was special like Marie or Zhu, although their being demonically special did take the edge off the jealousy a little.
“I wish I knew,” Aldrich said.
“Someone has theories, sir,” Tank said fiercely. He didn’t want Army officers talking behind his back—if there was talking to be done, it could
be done to his front.
“Sure. Some think your biological father or a grandparent might be an enhanced human, and they’re tracking the shift through the generations. Regressing toward normal was mentioned.”
“Regression toward the norm,” John corrected him. “It’s all about how many generations it will take for an enhanced human’s kids to go back to normal. Personally, I don’t plan to have any kids to find out. I’m glad I’m not one of those rare mods that could still have kids.”
“Oh, but kids are so much fun,” Aldrich said. “The midnight feedings, the screaming matches about who changes more diapers, the child support, and accusations about whether you really love them. And then when you do something to show a little love, the kids get all brassed off about how you don’t have the right to control their lives. It’s the greatest joy and the greatest pain all wrapped up in a cute little package.”
John’s face contorted in horror. “I’ll skip it.”
“The kid part is actually pretty nice, but avoid the ex-wife half of the family dynamic.” Aldrich took another swig of beer. “However, that’s only one theory. Some think you’ve had some subtle alteration done, others wonder if you’re a control group, and a few think you’re a normal human Chow put near Zhu because you tested high in empathy or some shit like that. But that group is putting it down to using you to protect his favorite lab rat.”
“Zhu.”
“Yep. And then there’s the other new thing.”
“The other, sir?” If Tank got many more revelations, he was resigning from the human race and building a hut made out of mud in some deep forest. He might die of snakebite, but at this point, that was looking like a pretty good fate.
John said, “Zhu found evidence that it was the alien playing his father who turned on the mating pheromones while you were in the base. He thinks Chow may have even hacked Army computers to get you assigned to that supply flight, but he’s still trying to learn the code well enough to be sure.”
“Yep, the alien outed our secret program on purpose, which means he knew about it.” Aldrich sighed. “We pretty much figured that the aliens would eventually notice we were healing their big old crashed ship, but having direct evidence is a little more concerning.”
“He did that on purpose?” That didn’t make any sense, not that Tank expected aliens to make sense.
John got a thoughtful look on his face. “If you knew about it, you’d tell Zhu. It could be he was trying to get Zhu in contact with people who could explain reality.”
Aldrich held up a finger. “Which would require him to care about the kid.”
“They care,” John said with some confidence. “Everyone cares about something, or else they’d stay home and watch their version of television.”
“And I’m pretty sure that gladiator ship was their version of TV,” Aldrich shot right back.
John didn’t back down. “Not all the aliens are on those ships. Some are down here trying to figure out you people, and in case you haven’t noticed, this planet is fucking weird. They’re having to put some effort into whatever they’re doing.”
Aldrich didn’t answer, but he grunted. That seemed to end the argument. The Petersons had always told Tank and the others that demons wanted power, but as far as Tank could see, the aliens had the technology to take however much they wanted. They could take over the world. Marie’s father had been the biggest bastard of them all, but his egomania never seemed to affect more than their high school.
“Does my DNA match anyone in the system?” Tank asked.
“Nope, but DNA is fairly recent and samples are purged when someone dies,” Aldrich said. “The best we got is that you are one hundred percent European, and as far as the geneticists can tell, about as German as bratwurst.”
Tank stopped breathing. His mother was one-eighth Delaware native and mostly Scottish.
“Look, I know this sucks.” Aldrich rested his arms on the bar and leaned forward. “It sucks that I left my family behind and deployed so often that my marriage didn’t survive. It sucks that Sadler’s sister died while she was stuck on base because Lev and I had gone missing. She can’t even tell her brother-in-law why she missed the funeral. It sucks that soldiers have to fight wars for politicians who never even see the results of their decisions. Since the first people picked up rocks and sticks and decided to beat on each other to solve some dispute, a soldier’s life has been defined by the word unfair. But you’re bigger than this. Don’t let it throw you.”
Tank felt emotions rise up like a balloon—and he felt like that balloon might burst at any time. He took a deep breath and tried to push it all back down. “I just want to run away from all of this,” Tank confessed.
John spoke up. “Retreat can be healthy.”
“Yeah, like you two would ever retreat from anything,” Tank said with a dark laugh. They were real soldiers.
“I retreat to fixing up old cars,” Aldrich said.
“I retreat to musical theater,” John offered. “Musicals are amazing. Have you seen Jesus Christ Superstar?” He nodded knowingly.
Tank stared at them. His brain couldn’t quite process the idea of John watching musical theater. “Really? Because if you’re lying to make me feel better…. Well, it’s kinda working, but in the long run, it’d be a crappy thing to do.”
Aldrich put his beer on the counter. “Sometimes I want to rail against the shit that’s been dumped on my head. I never asked to leave my family, but they act like choosing my country was the same as spitting in their faces and walking out. And the bout of slavery on the gladiator ship didn’t exactly leave me with improved mental health.”
“I don’t want to leave base because I don’t want to live with people who think national borders or the flavor of bread matters,” John said. “When I’m on a mission, I hear regular Earthers, and I want to beat their heads in for being annoying.” John brought his fist down on the bar.
Aldrich reached over and patted John’s arm. “No killing the natives, big guy.”
“That’s why I retreat to musicals,” John said. “It prevents me from breaking someone.”
“We all feel the urge,” Aldrich said dryly. “We just limit how many people we expose to our less than charitable sides. Even Lev has his moments of complete asshattery. Trust me, I’ve seen them. He only looks cute when he isn’t so frustrated that I have to hold him back from sending exothermic bombs to the Senate. It’s been a close call once or twice. And too many people don’t get it. I won’t even talk to these baby recruits because they’re too young and stupid to understand that we can curse out life and call it unfair and spend an evening trying our best to avoid it and still get the damn job done the next day.”
Tank got it. He’d left instead of dumping all his worries on Lev. He hadn’t wanted to freak Lev out with all the ways Tank wasn’t handling this. But Aldrich and John were easier to talk to, because Tank didn’t love them the way he did Lev. He was willing to torture them with his whining and by pointing out their lack of logic. “You just told me.” Tank was about as raw as a recruit came. He still forgot the saluting rules often enough to make him squirm every time he ran into an officer.
“Tankersley, you understand the real world well enough that I don’t have to pussyfoot around you like some recruit who’s never seen battle,” Aldrich said. “Life sucks, good people die, bad people get away, and none of that makes our job any less important. Because of that, we’re bitter and damaged souls, all of us. So you cry in your beer or you scream or you go back to the hotel and train with John, but there’s one thing you can never do.”
Tank swallowed, afraid of what Aldrich was about to say.
“You can never put these feelings back in the box and ignore them. They’ll eat you alive, and I swear, if I think you’re a danger to this team or to Lev, I’ll drop you off the back of a C-130—and I’m not sure I’ll hand you a parachute first, got it?”
Tank nodded, watching as Aldrich got up and headed for the bac
k, his bottle of beer still sitting on the counter with no more than a few swallows gone. Aldrich stopped at the kitchen door. “And Tankersley, remember that Lev is different than us. Sure, he had the time on the ship, but John and I took every one of his fights. He was sheltered at college because he was an underage kid, and he joined the most sheltered covert unit in the entire government. He’s surrounded by men and women who would die to protect him, and he rarely even notices that he’s important. Don’t fuck him up by expecting him to understand.”
Maybe it was the three swallows of beer making him light-headed, but Tank let the truth slip out unedited. “He fell in love with you first,” Tank said.
Aldrich was silent for long seconds. “Yeah, I know,” he finally said with a sigh. “If I could change my sexuality…. Okay, I wouldn’t. I still think he deserves more than a cranky soldier with PTSD and an attitude.” Aldrich gave Tank a dirty look. “Just remember that even if I don’t love him romantically, I do love him. If you fuck this up, I will haunt you for the rest of my life. I will take joy in making you miserable. I will devote all my time to screwing you over.”
With that, Aldrich turned and headed to the back without even ordering Tank to return to base.
“Lev’s my friend, my teammate, my family. I have no trouble killing you and hiding the body,” John added.
Tank eyed him. “Metaphorically, you mean?”
“Nope. I’m good with literal. So make him happy.” John slapped Tank on the shoulder. “We should get back to base. The general is getting weird about his rules, and the geeks keep finding more stuff in that computer we salvaged. If you still need to avoid everyone, you can hide in my room. The soldiers usually avoid me after I break a few of them.”
“And again, that’s a metaphor, right?”
John snorted before he said, “If you brag about how great your training is, you’d better be able to back that up.”
“You do know that as regular humans, they have no hope of keeping up with you or Marie, right?”