by O E Tearmann
An indignant squawk from Laz drew his attention to the table for a moment before he looked back to his commander with a nervous smile. "Ah, no. I just thought I'd… well, congratulate you, I suppose. Janice doesn't start shouting for just anyone. Her opinion carries a great deal of weight in this neighborhood."
"Thank you?" Commander Headly looked uncertain if this was a good thing or not. He shifted his weight, rubbed the back of his neck, and very pointedly looked away from the table full of Wildcards behind him as he managed to finally get a spoonful of vegetables on his plate. "I'm just grabbing dinner, then I'll be out of everyone's hair."
"You could join us, sir," Kevin suggested. Maybe that would help solidify the foundation Janice's lecture had put in place. Taylor had always eaten with the crew until he'd gotten too sick. Then they'd all cram into his quarters to eat together more often than not.
The other commanders had all ordered someone to bring them meals in their office, refusing to even fetch their own food for fear of fraternizing too much with the troublemakers. But Aidan was here, looking like a lost dog begging for scraps, and Kevin couldn't help but offer for both their sakes. Spending time with the gang off-duty might help start building bridges. Start working toward saving his family.
Aidan lifted his head and studied Kevin's face.
Kevin's breath caught and he fought down the urge to blush again. Why did the most gorgeous man he'd met in a year have to be a commander? He cleared his throat and pushed that thought very firmly away. "If you'd like, sir. There's plenty of room."
"Aidan," the commander corrected quietly, turning back to arranging food on his plate. "If you don't mind."
Kevin could have kicked himself. First name, damn it. He'd forgotten again. Habit would trip him up. He'd always called Taylor "sir," and before that, he'd called every man older than him in the Corporation 'sir' except his dad. Forgetting that training was not going to be easy.
He pushed his glasses up again to hide the momentary pause. "Sorry. Habit. But you're still welcome to eat with us. With Janice on your side, no one's going to bother you. Tonight, at least."
"I'll pass," Aidan said without looking up. "Maybe later in the week. I've got too much transfer paperwork to finish up."
"I see." Kevin swallowed a sigh. He hadn't realized how much he'd wanted to see the man eat with them. The refusal felt like a punch to the gut. But why?
Socratic method, he told himself. There is a reason for every reaction.
Why was he reacting like this? Because he'd been imagining what Aidan might look and act like when he finally relaxed. And because the man looked lovely and lost.
Kevin would have rolled his eyes if he'd been alone. He really needed to focus on the fact that the man was the new commander, a superior officer. Unobtainable. Verboten. Taboo. Trouble.
He opened his mouth to apologize, but three short beeps over the intercom beat him to the punch. A chorus of tab alerts shrilled around the room, underlined with a digitized shout of "Oh, shit, it's the fuzz!" from Laz's device.
Kevin's heart leapt into his throat. The drone proximity alarm. Above them, a search-and-destroy ViperDrone was within firing range. If they had been detected, the bombs would start falling any minute now.
Event File 8
File Tag: ViperDrone
Timestamp:13:10-4-2-2155
In one instinctive motion, Kevin grabbed Aidan's arm, pulled him around the corner into the makeshift kitchen and shoved him under the stainless steel counter. He wedged himself into the remaining space, hunched over his drawn-up knees. The counter wouldn't do a damn thing to protect them if the EagleCorp drone over their heads did drop a bomb, but it was standard procedure to take cover during a proximity alarm unless you were of any use on the base's defenses.
Janice cursed long and hard over the sound of thumping boots and chairs scraping on the prefab floor. Her voice trailed away as she ran out of the canteen to make sure the white noise filters and slick tarps that defended them against the drone's sensors were up and working.
Kevin made a mental note to brush up on his slick tarp coding. At least then he wouldn't feel helpless every time the alarms went off.
It took him a moment to realize the ragged breathing under the counter wasn't his own. He looked over at Aidan. They sat with their shins pressed together, Kevin's feet awkwardly placed between the commander's.
He swallowed. He'd grabbed Aidan and yanked him around as if he was some fresh-off-the-Grid recruit. Some kid too clueless to know to run for cover when the drone proximity alarms went off. A kid like Kevin himself had been once.
How idiotic could he get?
Wincing, he whispered, "Apologies for the manhandling, sir. I get a bit over-enthusiastic about the proximity alarms."
"Better than ignoring them," Aidan whispered back. He shifted, kicking Kevin in the process, and muttered his own apology. Kevin waved it away.
The exchange circuit on the power storage unit clunked as the base went into defensive shutdown, cutting all non-vital systems in order to bring the base's footprint to a bare minimum across the electromagnetic spectrum. The canteen lights flickered and went out, plunging the room into complete darkness. Baby Henrietta started wailing. Someone shushed her gently.
Kevin carefully pulled his tab out of his pocket and flipped it on. The soft blue light of the screen display was blended into a wash of light by the smears on his glasses. Swallowing a curse, he balanced the tab on his knees and squirmed until he could pull the cleaning cloth he carried out of his breast pocket. He wiped the lenses and squinted at the tab screen through them, trying to see if he'd actually cleaned the blemishes. No luck. Another round of wiping cloth against plastic.
At least it was something to focus on beside the proximity to Aidan and the distant thwap of the drone's rotor blades. He smiled distractedly in Aidan's general direction. "Damn things never stay clean…"
"Is the eye injury too new for surgery?" Aidan asked, his voice barely a whisper in the tense quiet. "How long do you have to wait?"
Kevin didn't look up from polishing the lenses. The question was an old one. The surgery argument had been going on since his eyes had started acting up. Damian had tried to wheedle him into it more times than he could count. But his nearsightedness was one of the few truly human flaws he had after the genome sculpting Cavanaugh Corporation had done before he was born.
A man in a Cavanaugh Corporation board room had presented a standard for human perfection, other men had voted on it, and Kevin and three generations of children before him had been shaped by those hands. His parents had managed to get away with the minimum of genome optimization in his case. They'd gone so far as to falsify some of his medical paperwork to make sure his brain chemistry wasn't part of what the Corporation altered. The imperfection of his eyes and the imperfection of his sexual preferences were side effects of an unaltered brain. Proof that he was more than a set of someone else's specs made to order.
He wasn't giving that up.
He supposed he ought to be thankful that his gene sculpting had been the result of decades of practice, unlike the offspring of the first test subjects. He'd read the history. In susceptible areas of the world, Cavanaugh had made deals with governments to set up The Beta Project. That first generation of genetically modified Beta Babies had been brilliant. But their children, the Gammas, had more often than not inherited the chaotic results of poor gene-splicing in their germline.
He forced himself to replace his glasses on his nose. No use dwelling on the irritating nature of his DNA. His commander had asked him a question, and he had a long-practiced response. Best to give it before the silence drew on too long.
"It's less of an injury than a personal quirk, sir. I'm a nostalgic aesthete, as the base is terribly fond of reminding me. I enjoy the pre-Dissolution look." He cleared his throat. "It doesn't impair my job performance
, sir. Damian has contacts for me when I go on-Grid. Wearing those, I'm just another face in the crowd."
"I see." But Aidan's tone sounded like he didn't.
Kevin sighed and awkwardly tucked the cleaning cloth back in his pocket.
"Shut up, Kev!" Liza hissed from the other side of the counter. "You don't know if they've got sound monitoring on this one!"
"EagleCorp haven't used sound monitoring since they hit their own guys couple months back," Yvonne whispered down the wall.
"Could've started again," Liza protested.
"Shut up! I hear it!" Topher's voice had sharpened in the way Kevin recognized as the sound of the junior transport specialist trying not to panic.
A deeper hush fell over the canteen, broken only by the muffled wails of the toddler. The distant whir of rotary blades filtered down to Kevin's ears, growing closer. He fought the urge to hold his breath. It could be up to two hours before the drone was out of range again. He'd been through hundreds of these. But the knowledge didn't ease the tension between his shoulders or the pounding of his heart. This one could always be his last.
He shoved the thought pointedly aside. No use getting too worked up. Janice was watching the layers of defense tech, ensuring the base was hidden from the drone's sensors. They were going to be fine. They were always fine. They'd get through.
If only telling himself that would allow him to breathe easier. If only he could stop the urge to move closer to the man beside him, just for the comfort.
Kevin drew a breath. Under the whirr of the rotors above him, he could hear his base family breathing all around him. He knew that Yvonne, Lazarus and Sarah would be huddled together against a wall somewhere. Jim and Andrea would be hunched over Henrietta and Tommy. Damian would be curled up with his siblings, Donny in Alice's lap more often than not. Dozer would be sitting with Topher, pretending he wasn't comforting his young assistant and distracting him with car talk. Liza would be sitting with Blake's arms around her, the one time she allowed anyone to support her.
The way everyone paired off during raids had sent a pang of longing through him for years, only barely hidden by the fear. And now, for the first time in years, he was hiding with someone else. An attractive someone else. Who was his superior officer, damn it.
"Mom?" Tommy's tremulous voice quavered.
"Tommy, I heard you doing the Corporation Callout earlier. You did such a good job," Andrea's voice whispered in the dark. Kevin could hear the frantic cheer in her tone as she tried to distract her son. "Can you do it for me again?"
Slowly, Tommy's thin whisper chanted out the doggerel. The words shivered into the dark.
"NatBank buys us and ZonCom sells.
ArgusCo tells us where we dwell.
TechCo owns what we read and play.
AgCo decides what we eat today.
EagleCorp tells us to obey.
Cavanaugh drugs us to make us well.
But one day we'll ring the Liberty Bell.
And then all the Corps will go to Hell."
The buzz of the drone's rotors grew louder, until Kevin was certain it was flying right above them. The metal counter tapped against the wall. He did hold his breath then, his bottom lip between his teeth.
Aidan placed a hand over his own mouth, eyes squeezed shut. His knees tensed together, squeezing Kevin's. Kevin bit down harder on his lip. Hiding with this man had been a terrible idea. He should have known better than to put himself in such close quarters with a man who-
An explosion neatly distracted him from those thoughts. The prefab walls rattled. Plastic dishes jumped off the tables. Henrietta's wailing redoubled, joined by quiet curses from several of the older base members.
Kevin worked his jaw to try to stop the ringing in his ears. Had the bomb hit the base? It certainly had felt close enough. But they were still alive. Must have been a lucky pot-shot. All the same, he pulled up the message app on his tab and sent a line to Janice, asking simply "Report?"
While he waited for an answer, he glanced up at Aidan. The commander still sat with his eyes closed, hand over his mouth. He'd started to tremble. Drone flyovers were stressful for everyone, but did such a routine part of their lives really freak him out that much?
Carefully, Kevin shifted his tab on his thighs and reached to gently tap Aidan's knee and get the commander's attention. When those blue eyes met his, he smirked as best he could and made a show of extending his middle finger toward the ceiling and the drone still buzzing overhead. He rolled his eyes theatrically.
Aidan blinked, then slowly returned the smile with a weak one of his own as he nodded.
Kevin hesitated a moment, then pulled up the memo app, tapped out, "Seriously hope this doesn't last as long as the last one-two hours of boredom almost killed me" and turned it so the commander could see.
Aidan's brow wrinkled in the flickering blue light. Then his smile strengthened just a little. He dug out his own tab and wrote a memo back. "Longest I ever had was six hours. Bits of the tarp kept going out."
"Six hours? It's a wonder you survived."
Aidan shrugged with one shoulder as he wrote. "I did. The base didn't. Buddy got me through. Having company helped."
"Good thing I'm here, then." Kevin finished the message off with a winking emoji before turning the tab back around.
Aidan started chuckling softly, then clapped a hand over his mouth again to muffle the sound. He had to finish giggling before tapping out his next words.
"Yeah, weirdly lucky today, I guess."
The drone rotors grew deafening again and Kevin froze halfway through his response, glancing up at the bottom of the countertop as if he could see through it and pinpoint the location of the machine. He forced his gaze back down, carefully counting his breaths until his heartbeat slowed. He watched the minutes slide by in the top corner of his tab. Five. Ten. Twenty. Thirty.
The whir of the drone shifted erratically, louder and softer by turns, never steadying into a pattern. Finally his tab vibrated and a base-wide message from Janice popped up on the screen.
It's fine. Bastard's heading out. Get off my ass, you paranoid gamma-brained turkey-fuckers.
Kevin let out a long breath and sank back against the wall. Of course, this had the unfortunate side effect of pressing his legs more firmly into Aidan's. He instinctively straightened up. That move slammed his head on the bottom of the counter. Bewildered, he rolled gracelessly out into the kitchen.
"All clear," Liza called into the quiet, relief palpable in her voice as the sounds of the drone faded into the distance.
Kevin reached down to help Aidan out from under the counter, his head throbbing from connecting with the metal. As the commander found his feet, something dropped from the ceiling to land on his shoulder. Kevin hadn't anticipated hearing his commander scream on the man's second day of duty. But life with the Wildcards was full of surprises.
Event File 9
File Tag: Requisitions
Timestamp:13:50-4-2-2155
Aidan hadn't meant to scream. He wished he could go back in time and clap his hand over his mouth before the sound had escaped. But the thing had landed on his shoulder without warning. It had claws, and his body had been pumping adrenaline since he'd gotten under that table. So now he'd screamed in front of his unit. Idiot!
"Sir?" Kevin's face looked washed out in the soft light of the tab screen, eyes dark and watchful. In the blue light, his red hair had a purple tinge.
Aidan had to bite his lip to keep from yelping as whatever was on his shoulder dug sharp claws into his skin, crawling down his back. He wanted to scrabble for it, but whatever was on him might have teeth as well. Plenty of things out here were poisonous.
"Something's landed on me. Um, you got a light?"
The power storage unit outside buzzed back to the life, followed by the canteen lights flickering on one at a time. By the time al
l the lights were on, Aidan could feel the gazes of the entire team on him. Just what he didn't need, looking like a panicking coward just when he'd started making positive impressions. Damn it!
"You okay, sir?" Liza asked as she inched around the kitchen counter. Her hand darted out and grabbed the thing from his back, yanking it off.
Aidan took a deep breath and glanced at what she'd grabbed. A lizard. It was a goddamn lizard. He could have kicked himself. "Yeah. Sorry. Just startled. Is everyone else all right?"
"For now," Liza muttered, glowering at the squirming lizard in her hand. Without another word, she spun around to face the rest of the base, holding the offending reptile high. "Okay, guys. I know Janice has kept the tarps up to date, and we haven't had animal issues in years. So, who brought a lizard in?"
Stiff silence filled the room, suffocating Aidan with unspoken words as people glanced at one another, glanced away, shifted. Kevin cleared his throat behind him. Yvonne uncomfortably glanced down at her tab. Then her eyes shot wide.
"Kev! Fuck, Ed's asking where we are!"
Aidan glanced between the specialist and the logistics officer as the man groaned.
"Shit! The timing! I should have thought!" Then the redhead was moving, jogging across the room, grabbing Yvonne and Sarah by their elbows as he passed. "Get geared up, we've got an ETA under twenty at seventy, if we can get away with it. I want us out together, that flyover was too close for comfort, make sure that-"
Aidan blinked as his logistics team moved and talked, completely ignoring him. What was this, and who was Ed? He didn't have any Ed on the rosters, and there hadn't been anything scheduled on his tab. What kind of commander didn't know what was going on with his own base?
"I'm coming." Lazarus added sharply, swinging around and loping after the trio. "If Ed got tracked again-"
"God forbid," Kevin shot back in clipped tones. "But not a bad idea. Let's get geared and-"