Tap-Dancing the Minefields Page 4

  “So, Marie.” Lev sat on the second step of the crooked ladder leading to the bed, elbows on knees as if he were waiting for storytelling hour. The problem was that Tank hadn’t quite decided how to edit his stories. He hated lying to a lover, and Tank was seriously hoping they were lovers as opposed to people who had randomly had really hot sex in a closet before living in denial until the powers that be decided to let him off this base. That would suck.

  “Marie is part three of the three musketeers.” Tank felt the familiar stone in his heart when he said that. There had been five of them, but Roger…. Tank couldn’t go there even in the privacy of his mind, and Ellie was a pain too vivid to share. That left three. Tank, Marie, and Zhu. He edited his story to tell as much of the truth as he could without betraying either his friends or his grief. “My father walked out when I was in diapers. My mom… well, she worked more than she was at home, and Marie and Zhu became my family.”

  “I could arrange for you to get a call through to them,” Lev offered.

  “The security around here is a little on the hyperparanoid side, which makes sense considering that technically this is huge black-ops, covert-world secret stuff. However, Marie and Zhu are not big with the trusting of the government, and are even less big with the secret government stuff.”

  “What do you mean?” Lev leaned forward. Keeping secrets from him was not going to be easy. The man was sharp, and Tank… not so much. Some days Tank really wished someone would hit him hard enough on the head to make him forget all the stuff he didn’t want to know so he could have a normal life. Then again, his first shot at normalcy had landed him in the middle of an alien conspiracy, so clearly that wasn’t going really well for him.

  “Marie has had a few… troubles. Not troubles, more issues. Or issue-like points of contention. There was a bodega and a fire and these gang members who made some accusations that may or may not have been true.” Tank watched the growing shock on Lev’s face and tried to change verbal directions. “And Marie is the sweetest woman in the world, assuming you don’t get between her and any shoe clearance sales, which is not smart. Trust me. But she has the worst luck. I mean, the one day I show up here, you have a hormone bomb go off. If Marie ever visited, the ship would spontaneously combust. That’s just Marie’s luck.”

  Tank didn’t add that most of her luck came down to her father trying to force her to go all dark side. The police would accuse Marie, and her father would sweep in with a big-name law firm and try to get her to sign her soul over to him. At least Zhu’s father had only been dismissive and murderous. Trying to steal your daughter’s soul was particularly slimy.

  “I’ve known a few people with shockingly bad luck,” Lev said.

  “This gang broke into the bodega where Marie had a part-time job, but the police said the gang members weren’t on the surveillance tape. They tried saying that Marie had set off a bomb in there, and they called it terroristic. I don’t know how often you get to New York, but let me say that New York police have very little patience when it comes to anything related to terror. It was a mess.” The look on Lev’s face was getting worse. Tank grimaced. “I just made her sound like a psycho, didn’t I?”

  Lev cleared this throat. “Maybe a little.”

  “Yeah. That’s why she usually doesn’t let me describe her. She knows I have diarrhea of the mouth.” At least Tank hadn’t described the nasty bit of demon summoning and blackmail required to get her father to call off the prosecution.

  “Logorrhea.”

  “Huh?”

  “Diarrhea of the mouth is ‘logorrhea.’ The root is ‘logos,’ meaning word or discourse, but the ‘rrhea’ comes through Latin to the French rheum, meaning flowing or stream,” Lev explained.

  “Either you like your words, or you know how to lie really, really well.”

  Lev’s small smile broke out into a wide grin. “A little of both,” he admitted. “So, why aren’t you calling Marie?”

  “Well.” Sitting up, Tank tried to figure out how to explain this right. “To use the phone system here, the sergeant said they’d have to run a security check on the person on the other end. If Marie found out that I put her name in front of a government agency after all the trouble she’s had, she’d pretty much kill me. I try to avoid death whenever possible. It has a really crappy retirement plan.”

  Lev didn’t even try to hide that he was laughing at Tank. “Okay. But that might mean you’re not calling them for months. Depending on Clyde’s mood, possibly many months.”

  “I really hope that even if the colonel keeps me stationed here, I will qualify for some leave in four months.” Sadly Tank figured the others wouldn’t come looking for him. After the way it had ended, everyone avoided each other so well that Tank figured he could vanish forever and no one would come looking.

  “Clyde is only pretending to be an asshole,” Lev promised, which wasn’t the same as promising that Tank would ever get his life back.

  “Good pretending skills.”

  Lev laughed. “More than you know. What do you think of the quarters?”

  Tank looked around. He liked the privacy, and he could deal with the alien life-form around him, even if his gut still wanted to scream “demon.” “It’s a lot better than barracks. Does the quartermaster have sheets big enough for that bed?” Tank was also going to have to figure out how to make it. Because the bed was like a nest tucked into a niche, and he would have to crawl around on the sheet while tucking it. Hopefully no one would expect military corners.

  “The bed has temperature controls on the wall. I could show you how to use them.” Lev’s tone was low and soft, and the hairs on the back of Tank’s neck stood up. Either that was one hell of a good “come fuck me” voice, or all Tank’s wires were crossed.

  “You’d show me how to use the bed?” Tank really needed to make sure he wasn’t getting this wrong, because he had misinterpreted interest in some painful ways in the past. Lev really seemed out of Tank’s league, so he figured there was a pretty good chance that wishful thinking was screwing with his head. “I don’t want to annoy you by pushing in where I’m not wanted.”

  “Oh, you’re wanted,” Lev assured him. “In the last ten years, I’ve been surrounded by soldiers and scientists, but none of them see me as a person. I’m definitely the sexless wrench carrier around here.”

  Shock stole Tank’s first, second, and third thoughts. He finally managed to say, “You are completely hot, and not to brag or anything, but I’m pretty sure that was good sex we had, so you’re definitely not sexless.”

  “You say that, but trust me, the rest of the program does not see me that way. I’m usually running around trying to fix something or figure something out, so I don’t flirt, and it’s really not as if there are a lot of gay men in the program.”

  “Oh, I think there are a whole lot more today than yesterday,” Tank said dryly.

  Lev laughed until he snorted. “I kind of like having someone look at me as Lev first and ‘the guy who runs the science program’ second. I think we can make arrangements without annoying each other.”

  Tank had a fantasy of jumping the man right then and there. “Okay, so….”

  Lev stood up. “So medical said you needed a good night’s sleep, since John wants you to start with the trainees tomorrow, evaluating your fighting. After you’re finished, I’ll show you how to control the temperature on my bed.”

  Tank’s cock almost drooped in disappointment when he realized he wasn’t getting an invite tonight. Yeah, he should probably rest up for tomorrow’s evaluation, but he was the official dishwasher and floor mopper. He didn’t have to do more than show up. Lev, however, was already heading for the door. “When you and John are finished tomorrow, I’ll see you then. Okay?”

  “But….” Tank didn’t want to agree—he wanted to go with Lev right now—but Lev almost dashed out of the room, his pants showing a suspicious bulge.

  Tank cursed adulthood. He hated having to be responsible and
boring and not have sex when he had to get up early in the morning. After stripping off his shirt, he threw it at the corner before heading into the bathroom. Now he had to deal with slime in his bathroom and blue balls. The main barracks sounded better with every passing second; however, Tank didn’t like going back on his decisions. So he picked up the black-and-white brochure and started reading about how to use an alien toilet.

  Chapter Four

  MORNING CAME with a long, slow wank and then a frantic dash for the shower after he noticed the time. Of course calling his facilities a shower was stretching it. He had a hairy wall, and when Tank stepped close, all the little hairs came to life, each reaching for him with a feathery touch. Once a hair found a microscopic piece of dirt or dead skin, it curled around it and delivered the particle to the wall, which ate it. Apparently the walls in quarters without personnel living in them needed to be fed, or the funky hair mats could die. From the reports Tank had heard the previous day, the stink could become bad enough that everyone had gone out of their way to keep the shower walls healthy after the first shower had died in the seventies. For three months, the Incursion Force personnel had been trapped under the ice with the smell of intense decomposition.

  Dressed in his work uniform, Tank reported for the late breakfast shift in the mess hall and started in on a mountain of dishes, racking them and shoving them through a conveyor washer. That led to lunch cleanup and then a quick change into sweats so he could get his combat evaluation.

  He hadn’t had time for any serious daydreaming. Apparently anyone high enough to get secret black-ops clearance didn’t do dishes, and most of the guys who did dishes couldn’t get the clearance to work in the ship. It left a lot of unwashed dishes and a small but devotedly annoyed group of enlisted support staff. The fact that Tank had been ordered to report for training had not gone over well with Staff Sergeant Powell.

  However, orders were orders, and dressed in standard-issue sweatpants and shirt, Tank searched out the base gym. The search took longer than he’d expected because of the curving walls and the odd ways that the human structure encroached into the broken hull of the alien ship. It created a maze of corridors, so even though he’d set out early, he ended up walking into a room already full of people.

  Marines and Rangers and Badasses, oh my.

  They all might be wearing sweats, but some of these guys leaked rank. Tank could taste it. The only thing worse than stupid fighting exercises that looked nothing like fighting was having to do them with officers who took offense if you slid on the ground between their feet and kicked in the general direction of their genitals.

  As far as Tank was concerned, any sex organs were fair targets in love and war, but these guys… no, these guys seemed to think that all fighting had to follow rules. Tank gave any one of them fifteen seconds tops with Marie or Zhu. Especially Marie. Zhu kicked ass through creative and illegal use of intercom systems and stun guns, but Marie was violently ass-kicking scary. She would teach them a thing or two about real fighting.

  The room itself was enormous. About half of it was a large open area with a jumbo-sized training mat. The other half was shared by a boxing ring, a few punching bags, and a full workout gym. A few guys in Army shirts lifted weights big enough to make Tank’s eyes water in sympathy. Two of the walls seemed to be the outer hull of the alien ship, and it had an iridescent blue shimmer that reminded Tank of a beetle.

  Well, he just needed to have an evaluator tell him he sucked, and then he could go back to washing dishes. Tank seriously had to question the sanity of making a dishwasher go through combat evaluation. He slid into place next to a man with no neck and behind a woman with corded arm muscles that suggested she either had a gym obsession or a testosterone imbalance. It was kinda hot. Practicing his “don’t look at me” expression, Tank focused on his own shoes while the last few victims of mandatory evaluation trickled in. However, when the room went silent, Tank looked up.

  John.

  He scanned the room impassively, and Tank could see a couple of the other trainees straighten up as John’s gaze slid past them.

  Tank remembered how strong John’s grip was. His odds of avoiding embarrassingly bad ass-kickage would fall to about zero if John chose him as a partner. On the plus side, Tank figured anyone he picked would get their asses kicked. Short of Marie herself, Tank couldn’t think of one person who could compete. Zhu was part demon too, but despite his broad shoulders and square chin, he was actually a giant nerd. Marie was a tall, wispy redhead with curls that were always flying in her face. She looked like a good wind would take her down, but she had inhuman strength and speed. They had a yin-yang thing going.

  John stopped near the edge of the mat. “You’re going to be fighting creatures that are stronger than you, faster than you, and a million times smarter than you. You will get your asses kicked. You will lose, and you will show that you can pick yourselves up and keep fighting, or I’ll recommend that Colonel Aldrich loan you to India indefinitely. Steve Ellis. Willis Patakis. Begin.”

  Tank could see the others all looking at each other for some sort of confirmation that John meant what he said. Eventually Ellis and Patakis stepped out and faced each other on the mat, beginning the formal dance that military people called fighting. Tank found that real fighting used fewer orchestrated blows and blocks and a lot more flailing. But if he made one little observation about that fact, he got stuck peeling potatoes for a month. He wasn’t making that mistake again. Tank frowned. Wait. His official job now was washing dishes and peeling potatoes. Did that mean he could say whatever he wanted and have the only punishment be to get sent back to his job? Because he was an oddly efficient dishwasher. Dishes were not judgmental. Tank appreciated that.

  Patakis put Ellis on his back and took a step back, ending the match.

  “Is Ellis broken?” John demanded in a sharp tone.

  “No, sir.” Patakis came to attention, but he didn’t salute. He looked like he might, but as far as Tank could tell, no one exactly understood John’s rank. One of the other dishwashers had made vague comments about John being a prisoner of the aliens longer than anyone else ever, but the staff sergeant had yelled at them to get back to work before Tank had gotten any useful gossip.

  John stepped right up to Patakis. “Then why did you stop?”

  Patakis glanced toward Ellis, who had just gotten off the floor. “Sir, I didn’t want to attack a man when he was down.”

  Tank snorted. The instinctive response made everyone in the gym look at him.

  “Tankersley,” John said. Tank cringed, but he stepped forward onto the mat. “Would you have stopped with an opponent on the ground?”

  Tank looked around. Then, braced with the knowledge that he was already the dishwasher, he shrugged. “Do you want the real answer or the one training sergeants kept trying to get me to say?” The whole audience shifted on their feet uncomfortably.

  John narrowed his eyes. “The real one.”

  Tank braced himself to make a really dumb move: tell the truth. “Okay. Unless the opponent is bleeding out his orifices, broken in multiple places, or decapitated, I won’t stop. Half the people who go on their backs do it a second before trying to eviscerate you.” And boy, Tank had learned that one the hard way.

  John quirked an eyebrow, but he didn’t correct Tank. Oh, everyone else in the room had something to say—Tank could see that in their expressions—but with John here, no one was saying anything. “Tankersley. Patakis. Begin.” John stepped back off the mat, and Tank eyed Patakis. He was out of breath from fighting Ellis, but he was confident in his ability to beat Tank. Funny enough, Tank was confident about his ability to get beat. The guy was huge. When Patakis advanced, Tank backed up, circling the edge of the mat.

  “Scared?” Patakis taunted. Yep, this was familiar territory.

  “Hell, yes. I think that’s called common sense kicking in, which is odd, because usually I don’t—” Right in the middle of his words, Tank turned and ran, leapi
ng over a weight-lifting bench and getting a tall machine between him and Patakis. “—don’t have that much common sense,” Tank finished from the far side of the room.

  Patakis let his hands drop to his sides, and the other recruits degenerated into random clumps, all whispering their horror. Yep, this was exactly like high school.

  “Sir?” Patakis asked, turning to John.

  “Is your opponent disabled?” That sounded oddly as if John was on Tank’s side.

  “Sir, he’s off the mat.”

  This time John snorted. “Right, and the aliens always fight fair and stay on the mat. Keep thinking that, and you’re going to be their next play toy.” That was a double-dog dare if Tank had ever heard one. Patakis looked from John to Tank and then back again.

  “Okay. Kid, I was going to take it easy on you, but you’re just asking for it.”

  “Funny enough, you aren’t the first person to say that, and others who said it were way scarier than you.” It was almost comical how many people had threatened to make him pay. Comical in a pathetic sort of way, but that was the sort Tank did best.

  “We’ll see.” Patakis had a dangerous look in his eye now, and he circled the machine carefully. Tank allowed himself to be herded around the machine to the far side before he dashed for a punching bag. Timing his movements with Patakis’s, he shoved at the heavy bag and feigned a fall, rolling onto his back long enough to see Patakis take the bag in the stomach. While Patakis was distracted by that, Tank struck out with a foot, aiming high enough to avoid breaking the knee. Still. It was going to hurt. Patakis went down with a grunt, and Tank scrambled to get to his feet.

  “Halt!” John shouted. Tank froze, one foot raised to kick a man while he was down.

  “Shit,” Patakis complained. John crouched next to him, his hands going over Patakis’s leg. The man stiffened but didn’t move while John made his examination.

  “It is not broken. Tankersley. Cantone. Begin.”

  Tank blinked. Okay, this is not the way it was supposed to go. Usually after he pulled a stupid stunt, the sergeant made him stand in the middle of the mat while enduring a screaming reprimand. The others looked as shocked as Tank, but Cantone broke away from the group with an almost gleeful anticipation that Tank did not like. Nope. Not one little bit.