Tap-Dancing the Minefields Read online

  “I can kinda see why.”

  “You don’t like it?” Lev sounded suddenly defensive.

  “It’s just a long way from the main corridor. I don’t think most people expect a thirty-minute walk to their barracks. How big is this ship, anyway?”

  “Massive.” Lev huffed. “The largest hole in the hull could accommodate a 747, but the first scans of the ship made it look undamaged because that is tiny compared to the size of the ship as a whole. If it hadn’t buried itself deep into the ice, the thing would probably be visible from space. Organic systems are bulkier, but I keep telling the auditors that the advantages of being self-healing far outweigh the additional weight and construction time. If one of our ships loses a heating system, they require backup parts and a repairman with engineering experience. These ships can heal themselves. That’s why this ship is in such good shape. Several of the systems work better now than they did in the sixties when the government first set up the permanent base here.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. The Army had to build in the hull’s broken exterior because it was trying to heal over. However, rebar and a little concrete seems to satisfy the ship’s desire to have the hole plugged.”

  “Ship’s desire? Is it alive?”

  “Not the way you mean. At least we’re almost positive. What we see are instinctive responses to stimuli. The ship is more like a body on life support. As long as the stimuli and nutrients come in, it will try to keep all the systems running.”

  “But no brain.”

  “Nothing we’ve found,” Lev said. “It’s funny you ask. That was Clyde’s first big worry too, although in his case it had something to do with whether the ship might want to kill us.”

  Clyde again. Tank nodded, but he was starting to notice a real pattern with their conversations circling back to Clyde. Tank wasn’t sure if he was being brave or just stupid by ignoring the little voice in the back of his head that said he was about to get his heart stomped all over. Maybe he was just lonely. And maybe he really, really liked Lev. All were pretty possible.

  “Do you want something to drink?” Lev asked brightly. And they had officially reached the awkward stage of this evening’s date.

  “I brought the supplies up, so I know what sort of crap you guys get delivered. I think I’ll stick with water.”

  Lev laughed as he shrugged out of his uniform jacket and tossed it at a table. “Actually, I’ve got cans of V8 juices, frozen lemonade, that sort of stuff.”

  “Lemonade sounds good.” Tank smiled and didn’t mention what else sounded good, but now that Lev had lost the jacket, Tank could see the definition of his shoulders so much better. It was hard to think of Lev as a geek because he had the body of a jock. That was Tank’s definition of a perfect man—geeky head with nice wide shoulders.

  “I’ll make some,” Lev offered, interrupting Tank’s little obsessive stare. Lev ducked his head in a gesture that made Tank’s cock ache. Oh yeah, Lev was cute. Seriously cute. Adorably cute. Tank could hold his own, and he definitely hadn’t gotten hit with the ugly stick, but he wasn’t in Lev’s league.

  “I’ll just go get that.” Only after Lev had sort of scampered out of the room did it occur to Tank that he’d been pretty much doing the creeper stare. Great.

  Lev had disappeared through one of the arches into what he must be using as a kitchen. Tank hoped the aliens didn’t actually set up kitchens, because he did not want to see their version of food preparation. While Lev was gone, Tank took the time to wander the room. When he had to step over a towering mass of science journals, he groaned in pain.

  Oh, yeah. John had totally kicked his ass. Tank stopped and examined a picture of Lev and some military folk. Clyde’s arm was thrown over Lev’s shoulder, John had a near-amused expression on his face, and the blonde woman who had flattened Tank during training stood beside him, her bright smile beaming at the camera. They were family. Tank could see that from the easy way they all posed in front of the camera. He had pictures of Zhu, Ellie, Marie, and him that looked pretty much exactly the same.

  “Do you like it on the strong side?” Lev called.

  Tank frowned. He knew what some people meant by strong lemonade, but he was almost sure that Lev wasn’t the sort to offer an underage man vodka. “I don’t know, is strong a metaphor for alcohol?”

  Lev stuck his head out of the kitchen. “No. I normally add about half as much water as I’m supposed to, but last time I tried to give Deborah a glass of lemonade, her lips puckered into this really unpleasant expression.”

  “Strong is fine. Alcohol, not so much.”

  “Deal,” Lev agreed as he disappeared into the kitchen. After a half second, he popped back out again. “Wait. Are you telling me you’re an alcoholic or that you’re too young to drink?” Lev had a slightly horrified expression.

  “No alcoholism. Not yet, anyway. There’s a long Tankersley family tradition of drinking too much and doing completely stupid stuff that I’m trying to avoid.” His father certainly had fucked up his life and damaged a lot of other lives in the process.

  Lev tilted his head and gave Tank an odd look. “Are you a fan of preventative measures or underage?”

  Tank shrugged. “Both. I signed up about eight months out of high school, and I’m a few months short of twenty-one right now.”

  Lev’s eyes got amusingly large. “Really? You’re twenty?” He made a face and took a step closer so he sort of wilted over the sofa’s arm. It was the sort of overdramatic gesture Marie used to complain about, but Tank had the uncomfortable feeling that Lev really did feel strongly enough to wilt. “I just robbed the cradle,” Lev said in a sort of stage whisper. “Clyde is never letting me forget this.”

  “Why, how old are you?” Tank figured that Lev couldn’t be too much older. He had the sort of cute going that only younger men had—versus Clyde, who had that whole “distinguished and dashingly handsome older guy” thing covered.

  “Old enough that I’m going to refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it tends to incriminate me.” Lev sighed. “This is a little… disconcerting. Clearly not disconcerting enough, because I have no intention of stopping.”

  Tank shifted as he tried to find a way to stand that didn’t make his thigh muscles ache. They’d hurt worse if he sat, though. “I never asked you to stop, unless you think this would damage your reputation too much.” Tank backed up. “I could go. I don’t think anyone other than John saw us leave together, and he doesn’t strike me as the sort to gossip.”

  While Tank was used to having a bad reputation, some people weren’t. He didn’t want to make Lev uncomfortable, especially when he had clearly found a place where he really fit in. Tank envied that. Everyone from the soldiers eating their lunches to the dishwashers lived in awe of Lev. They talked about Lev like he walked on water and swapped stories about how he could fix or figure out anything.

  The guys in the kitchen were ready to put up an altar for him, but that might have something to do with the fact that Lev had publicly ripped into Colonel Aldrich when the colonel stole every plate to use in an impromptu shuffleboard tournament. Staff Sergeant Powell had given Tank strict orders to hide the silverware and call for backup if Colonel Aldrich showed up. Tank was still having trouble getting his head around a colonel who annoyed people.

  Lev dashed forward and caught Tank’s arm. “Nope. I am not ashamed of you even a little. I will not get a bad reputation, although a few people might comment on my ability to rob the cradle. However, truth is a defense against slander, so I can’t exactly complain. I don’t suppose there’s any chance your parents lied about your age?” Lev smiled, his relaxed attitude making it easy for Tank to set aside the fear that he’d just screwed up their relationship before it had even gotten started.

  “I’m pretty sure I’m twenty, although I wouldn’t put it past my parents to lie if it meant a tax break or something. I don’t think they’d be smart enough to do that, but I wouldn’t put it past them.�
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  Lev laughed. Tank figured that was the best sound in the universe. “So what are your parents like?” Lev asked.

  “Um, my father is out of the picture. My mom is a hard worker. How about yours?”

  Lev pulled Tank toward the loveseat. “Both dead.”

  “Yikes. I’m sorry.”

  “I was raised by an uncle, and honestly, I was so young, I don’t remember losing them. I’ll be right back with the drinks.” Lev vanished through the archway. When he came back, he had two glasses of lemonade. “My team is my family now. We’ve been through a lot together, and I trust them at my back. I don’t think I would go into the field if the Army assigned new personnel, but as long as I have Clyde and Deborah, I can’t imagine staying behind when there are aliens to fight.”

  “And John?”

  “I don’t worry about him leaving.”

  Tank frowned. “Why?”

  Lev sat down next to Tank, their knees pressed together. It made the soreness in Tank’s leg worse, but Tank didn’t care because the simple touch sent shivers of pleasure through him.

  Lev said, “I assume you’ve heard that he came off a ship that used humans like gladiators.”

  “Yeah. It’s a small base, and people don’t have much to do other than gossip.”

  “You should have seen how bad it was before we got television broadcasts up here,” Lev said with a grimace. “But the thing is, John was born up there. He didn’t have a name. He had been raised by whichever adults happened to be in the same cell he was in at the time. Lots of the people up there spoke English, so he knows how to communicate, but he doesn’t know how to live off a ship. And then there’s his looks. He can’t easily navigate the civilian world.”

  Tank frowned. “Are you telling me he’s a prisoner here?”

  “What? No! I’m saying he won’t leave. Fighting aliens is his thing. He’s tried to have what we would call a normal life, and it failed horribly. The Army won’t ever transfer him, because there’s nowhere they can send him. This ship is the closest he’ll get to a home.”

  “But doesn’t this ship remind him of his prison?”

  “And the place where he grew up, and figured out how to survive, and saved me and Clyde. Without him, our asses would have been dead long before we escaped. And as someone who spent more time than I care to remember on that ship, I can tell you that the death fights were pretty rare. Most of the time it was about living with the other people in the cell.”

  “Did the others come home with you?”

  “No.” Lev grimaced. “They were afraid. It takes a lot of courage to step into the unknown. I hate that so many stayed behind, but I couldn’t make their choices for them. John was the only one who took the risk. The Army might transfer Clyde or Deborah, but John is always going to be here.”

  Tank pointed at the team picture. “Is that Deborah?”

  “Yep. Major Deborah Sadler. Do not slip up and call her doctor, even if she is one. We usually go out in the field together because I handle the hardware and she’s the software goddess.”

  “Like a real doctor, or the fake doctoring stuff like you do?” Tank asked. When Lev didn’t answer, Tank looked over. “What?”

  Lev was on his feet. “Fake doctoring?” He crossed his arms.

  “You don’t actually fix broken bones,” Tank pointed out.

  Lev gave an explosive snort-sigh noise that really didn’t sound healthy. “You think I’m a fake doctor?”

  Tank mentally ran that through the verbal double-check machine. “Not fake like you aren’t doing something real, because you’re really good at this whole thing—people are ready to join the cult of Lev—but you aren’t a real doctor with the actual doctoring.”

  Lev blinked fast and gave Tank a very unhappy look. “I have doctorates in mechanical and electrical engineering.”

  “Okay.” Tank drew the word out, because as much as he thought they were fighting, he wasn’t sure over what. Lev did another of those fast-blink things, this time followed by a narrowing of the eyes.

  “‘Doctor’ means you’ve studied a subject until you are one of the top experts and have helped to add more knowledge to the field. Not only have I studied engineering for years, but I published a well-done study on grid-connected photovoltaic systems and their use in load frequency control.”

  Tank definitely didn’t catch more than four words in that whole thing, and three of those were “the.” However, that definitely sounded impressive. “Wow. That’s really something.”

  “Which is why they awarded me the doctorate,” Lev pointed out. “‘Doctor’ means you’ve proved you are one of the best.”

  “Wait. I thought ‘doctor’ meant you could fix people who fell out of trees while trying to catch a butterfly.” Some days Tank really regretted skipping studying and even television to research spells and search through graveyards. It left him saying embarrassingly stupid shit.

  Lev shook his head. “No. That’s just a medical doctor—they have degrees that mean they’re the best at medicine. Trust me, my degree in engineering or Deborah’s degree in computer programming are just as important as any medical doctorate.”

  It finally clicked with Tank why Lev was pissed. “I really didn’t mean to say it wasn’t important—all the work you do, I mean. I’m pretty much famous for saying whatever comes into my mind, which is a problem because my mind is not always appropriate.” Tank held out his hand, and Lev took it. Tank then pulled Lev back down onto the sofa.

  “It’s fine.” Lev offered him a smile that actually looked genuine. “At least you listen to why I’m upset. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is when one of your best friends in the world keeps telling you over and over that your brain isn’t worth much if you can’t shoot well enough to protect it.” From Lev’s tone, he was not speaking in hypotheticals.

  “Colonel Aldrich?” Tank guessed.

  “Oh, yeah. I mean, I get that he’s just worried, and he thinks that nagging me is the way to get me to pay more attention to the real world, or something, but there are times I want to put hair remover in his shampoo.”

  “I’ve done that,” Tank said. “It doesn’t work as well as you might think, and when someone ends up with patchy spots, they turn a little mean. It wasn’t one of my better ideas.”

  Lev laughed and rested his hand on Tank’s knee. “I would never have the nerve to actually do that, not to my team. Deborah is the nicest member, and even she’s a little scary when it comes to revenge.”

  “And ass kicking,” Tank added as he rubbed his hip. Between the thumping Major Sadler had handed out and John’s extra tutoring, Tank was feeling more than a little sore.

  “Ass kicking?” Lev leaned over to stare at Tank’s hip, which was a little awkward given that Tank’s half-hard cock was starting to poke its head up.

  Tank rubbed the hip and tried to angle his body to avoid embarrassing himself. “The major was my sparring partner, not that I knew she was a major. Trust me, I would not have punched her in the nose if I’d known that. You know, most commands frown on punching officers.”

  “You punched Deborah?” The tone was enough to set off alarms in Tank’s head.

  “Are you sounding shocked that I got a hit in, or is that a sort of warning that punching Major Sadler is likely to lead to unpleasant and potentially permanent side effects?”

  “She’s one hell of a hacker, but your credit score is safe. She wouldn’t get revenge because you did well on the training mats. This is more shock. No offense, but Deborah is vicious when sparring.”

  “Oh, yeah. Trust me, I noticed.” Tank rubbed his hip.

  “Bad?” Lev asked.

  “It hurts. It didn’t help that John hit me on this leg when we were working out after the official working out.”

  “He….” Lev frowned. “John gave you one-on-one training?”

  “I asked him to. If I’m going up against something terrifying, I’d prefer to know the general shape and size of the terror
before I have to make any spur-of-the-moment decisions.” Tank figured that given the way his luck ran, the first time he went on leave, some alien was going to kidnap him. It would make a matched set for all his demonic kidnappings.

  “You must have really impressed John. He does not waste his time training just anyone.”

  Tank snorted. “Clearly he does, because he spent two hours training the base’s junior dishwasher.”

  “Junior engineering intern.”

  “Junior dishwasher who doubles as the engineering intern when things are quiet and there’s a low risk of the intern accidentally blowing up the giant alien ship,” Tank compromised. It was actually creeping him out a little the way Lev kept acting like Tank was nerdy. Geeky, yes. Tank was all about the geeky anime love. But nerdy implied smart, and Tank was not smart. Nope. Not even in the same ballpark with smart. He couldn’t even find the right street to get to the ballpark.

  Lev stood and pulled Tank to his feet. “You need therapy. Now let me see the leg. Sometimes I think John forgets that the rest of us weren’t raised on a slave ship and don’t have his thick skin.”

  “Is that literal?” Tank asked. “Is his skin thicker?”

  Lev shrugged. “I don’t know. I try to stay out of his business, but I will say they gave him some sort of upgrades in the fighting department.”

  “Is that why his skin is mottled?” Tank asked as he pushed Lev’s hands away and started unbuckling his own belt. Mutual undressing was good, but this wasn’t sexy time, and he had a big phobia about zippers, penises, and other people not being careful enough.

  “This is the really disturbing part. The humans born on the ship all had wild markings. John was pretty sure it was so the aliens could recognize them in the fighting arena.” Pain flashed across Lev’s face again, and Tank cringed at his own ability to stick his foot in his mouth. Nice job reminding Lev about the slaves he hadn’t saved. Tank knew what that felt like—he knew about walking away from a fight with the gut-deep understanding that your actions had failed and someone else had suffered.