A bit of Tank (Patreon)

A number of people asked about Tank (I’m going to go back to look at who when I’m at my desk computer). But anyway, that triggered my muse.  This would be late in book 2.

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Tank pulled open the access panel next to the door as quickly as he could without having the ship’s muscles tense up and lock him out. While he was busy securing their retreat, Lev hurried over to the main control panels. When he’d fought bad guys in the past, they had always been of the non-human variety, so he felt off-balance, either because he didn’t want to shoot humans or because he wasn’t used to engaging in battle without his PTSD providing an extra adrenaline rush that had become normal in life-and-death situations.

“I think I remember the command sequence for sleeping gas,” Lev said.

Tank reached into the access panel and found the fluid line that led to the ships locking system and pinched it off. Eventually the ship would repair itself, but that would keep the invaders out of the engine room for a while. And if it looked like they were going to be in here for too long, Tank could pinch the line again, although the ship did have a nasty habit of flooding an area with acid if the same line took damage too often. Tank thought that was a failsafe against some sort of vermin. Lev thought it was more likely to be some biological equivalent of swelling in a human muscle. Right now, their disagreements over the hypothetical function of ship systems seemed a lot less important than avoiding death or capture.

“The door secure. What you need me to do?”

“Find a way to magically expel dozens of Chinese special forces troops that seem to have invaded our base?” Lev joked.

Tank laughed. “Unfortunately, I stopped believing in magic a few years ago. And if one of the aliens that impersonated Marie’s or Zhu’s fathers were to show up, I am fairly sure they would pose a larger danger than Chinese special forces.” No matter how well-trained humans were, they didn’t possess the almost god-like technology of the aliens who liked to fuck with humans as their favorite lab rats.

Lev had his head under a console, but he brought it out long enough to glare at Tank. “Do you really think we could be in more trouble than this?”

“Oh, hell yes.” Tank adored his lover. He would not trade a lifetime alone for even a week at Lev’s side, but sometimes he was a little unrealistic when it came to human interactions. Having the Chinese hack their transport system and invade was bad, but it wasn't incursion-level bad. The Chinese wouldn’t lock them in the guts of an alien ship and turn them into gladiators fighting for the aliens’ entertainment. At worst, they all faced a long stint in a Chinese prisoner of war camp that the Chinese would not admit to running because then they would have to admit that they had invaded a base on Alaskan soil… Okay, they were completely and totally screwed.

The radio sounded clicked before the colonel’s voice came over it. “Lev, tell me you got to the engineering room.” In the background, Tank could hear the pops of machine-gun fire. In his mind, that sound was inexorably linked to training, to a physical challenge that left him feeling invigorated even if he got his ass kicked. This was the first time he had heard that sound in active combat, and his brain summoned the images of targets ripped apart by machine-gun fire. This time it wouldn't be targets but people on the other end of those weapons.

“Tank and I made it to engineering, but we lost Black and Cooper somewhere along the way and I don't even want to know where Van Angerson is. He's probably under his bed.”

“If he is, he is going to regret it. We have at least two divisions of enemy with boots on the ground and we've lost control of both the transport room and communication. Lev, I hate to say this, but you are our only hope.”

“Did you just quote Star Wars at me?”

“It seemed appropriate. And I thought that would go over better than telling you that I am ordering you to hold the engineering room. I don't care if the Chinese get a hold of me or God himself. You do not open that door.”

“We have limited access to water and no food at all. We can't hold the engine room for long,” Lev said.

“If you can't hold it, then you find a way to blow it to hell and back,” the colonel ordered.

Lev looked over at Tank with horror. The control room was a small space and any explosion would kill both of them. But if they tried to cross ship lines in order to create a delayed explosion, the Chinese would be able to fix the sabotage given a little experience with alien technology and luck. Given that these forces knew how to hack an alien transport system, Tank assumed they had both.

“You can't be serious,” Lev said. “Even if we lose control of the ship, we have a chance to regain control later. If we destroy it, that's it. The ship is gone. Thousands of years of technological advancements will be lost.”

The sound of machine-gun was louder in the background now, and Tank’s fingers inched for a weapon. Unfortunately all he had was his sidearm and his lucky knife. That would not be useful against entire divisions of the Chinese National Army.

“Lev, if the Chinese get ahold of this ship, they are not going to let it go. You might have ethical qualms about destroying it, but they won't. So all that technological advancement will belong to an enemy and the United States will be in a far more precarious situation.”

“You mean like the Chinese are now? We have the technology and they don't. Maybe we should be talking to them about reaching some sort of agreement.”

“You cannot be this naïve,” Colonel Aldrich snapped.

“Yes I can,” Lev said without an ounce of humor. Someone shouted and the colonel's radio cut off for a second before he returned. “Lieutenant Tankersley, I am ordering you to either hold the control room or destroy it. Am I clear?”

“Yes sir,” Tank answered. He gave Lev an apologetic smile and shrugged. Lev huffed.

“Good. At least someone listens to me. I'm a little busy now, so please do your fancy engineering thing and figure out a way to save the day. I'm going to try to minimize how many of my people end up shot in the head, so please hurry.” The colonel's radio clicked off and for one second Lev’s features twisted into a mask of horror. But as quick as the emotion came, it vanished and he looked towards the main control panel with determination.

“When all that stuff happened with the sex hormones, we found that air circulation system with all those different commands. We need to hijack that system and reactivate one of those.”

“If I remember right, one of those commands was for a poison,” Tank warned. The colonel would probably prefer that to losing the ship to the Chinese, but he knew Lev. If Lev’s accidentally killed everyone, including his three best friends, he would never forgive himself. Of course, that assumed the control room would be safe from whatever poison they dumped into the ventilation system.

Lev winced. “We know for sure what the sex drive chemicals look like. Maybe we should turn that system on.”

“You want to have armed and horny Chinese soldiers running rampant through the ship?”

“They be distracted,” Lev said.

“If you recall, we still had the ability to hold a weapon and threaten each other, even if we were a little distracted with the sex,” Tank pointed out.

Lev ran a hand over his face. “So we go with sex hormones or we trust my memory of the chemical pathways that led to one of the sleeping gases as opposed to the poison. I should probably remind you that chemistry is not my strongest field.”

“Sometimes you take risks and hope it turns out,” Tank said. He knew that better than most.

“I'm not a fan of working under pressure.” Lev went back to the underside of the control panel he'd been working on. “Wall access D7 should have a series of chemical tubes. Hell. Pull all the access panels for the entire column seven channel and let's see what we have available. Maybe seeing this system will jog a memory.”

“Maybe Chow would be willing to turn on the sleeping gas,” Tank said. “He was the one that turned on the sex spores.” Years later, Tank still didn’t know why the alien had done that, but he he learned to stop expecting aliens to bow to human logic. They did what they wanted.

“You're assuming he is anywhere near or that he would have any reason to want the ship in our possession as opposed to the Chinese. I'm not sure that aliens even understand our concepts of nations and nationalism.”

“You’re probably right. Besides, even when I thought Chow was a demon and not an alien, I was not into making deals with him.” Tank considered the biological wiring in front of him. Every time he’d been away from the ship for a few months, he forgot how strange it was to have a living ship. “So, I have light green, diarrhea green, spring green, greenish blue, algae blue, deep blue, aqua, and pink lines.”

Lev pulled his head out from under the panel and looked over at the tangle of lines, each with unique fluids. “We are so screwed.”

“I could stop start randomly crossing lines,” Tank offered. He scratched his right arm which was starting to itch horribly. “It's not the best way to test theories given that we have human beings in the firing zone, but if we have to, it's best we do it quickly while we have a chance to minimize casualties.”

“Or maximize them if we accidentally create a poison.”

“That too.” Tank used a line-clip to open the channel that fed the ventilation system. Now they just had to decide which chemicals to diverge into it. “Green is generally not safe, but I think pink was involved with the ship flatulence disaster. What you think about making the ship smell so bad everyone is vomiting?”

“Deal,” Lev said. “Hopefully vomiting soldiers will shoot each other slower.” His voice faded into something more distant. “Who the hell was rewiring the internal controls? I swear to God if I can get my hands around Van Angerson’s neck, I'm going to strangle him to death.” Lev sounded serious. But given that the more finely nuanced controls all went through that particular system, if Van Angerson had it partially disassembled, Lev had every reason to be angry.

Tank connected the pink line to the ventilation system and then headed over to see if he could help Lev trigger the release. When he ducked down, he spotted the problem. Someone had clearly tried untangling the crossed lines. They had conveniently labeled everything with little paper tags, but they hadn’t reconnected any of the lines. Lev was peering at each of the tags, his head inside the alien machinery as he reconnected systems.

Then once they reconnected the systems, they would have to do a fluid flush to get the air out of the lines before the control started working. This was a thirty or forty minute job at best, and the panel was narrow enough that two of them didn't have room to work. If Lev didn't kill Van Angerson, Tank was going to.

“If you need a break, let me know and I'll take over,” he said. In the meanwhile, he backed up against a section of the wall that had a slight curve to it and pulled his sidearm as he watched the main door. So far he hadn't heard any fighting outside, but it could be that the Chinese were laying in wait and hoping that one of them would check the corridor for enemy. Tank’s arm itched and he scratched absently as he considered and dismissed a dozen different plans. The Army considered him one of the most highly trained lieutenants in the service. Very few service members specialized in both science and combat, and Tank excelled at both. But nothing in Tank’s training gave him any hints about how he should handle this. From a tactical position, he was cornered and cut off from his unit. They had no reinforcements coming, no communication with home base, and he had one sidearm with eighteen bullets against at least two divisions of Chinese special ops soldiers. There was no amount of training that could overcome that disadvantage.

Lev started muttering angrily, promising physical torments when he got his hands on his engineering second-in-command. Tank really hoped the guy wasn't off somewhere getting dead. If he was, Lev was going to feel guilty for a long time. He had a tender heart, even when he was promising to fuck someone sideways with a cactus.

Tank jumped when static electricity danced across his right forearm. It startled them so badly that he nearly fired his gun wildly. Holstering his weapon, he studied the skin. A faint collection of bluish freckles danced under the skin on the inside of his arm. His mind went back to a day years ago when he'd been trapped in a car with an alien that pretended to be Mr. Chow.

The alien had captured his arm and run some sort of device over it. The Army had concluded that it was some sort of tagging system, but logic dictated that didn’t explain a constellation of fireflies under his skin. Tank opened his mouth to call out for Lev, but too many lives were on the line. Whatever was happening, Tank’s personal moment of discomfort and general freaking out was not equal to the hundreds of men and women who were counting on Lev to get control of the ship before any more lives were lost.

Tank tucked his right arm behind his back, determined to keep it out of sight for as long as possible. The second his forearm touched the smooth surface of the wall, the floor trembled. Thrown off balance, Tank slapped both his palms against the wall to stay upright, but then the wall vanished. Dozens or hundreds of tiny snake like wires darted forward.

And then Tank only knew darkness.