by Tal Valante
Mark almost danced beside him as they passed through the corridors of the Cyclopes but remembered at the last second to assume a cool, professional expression, as befit an officer. He knew the way to the T.O.’s quarters by heart. Hadn’t he passed through the hallway outside a hundred times, hoping to catch sight of Shane? Hadn’t he dreamed about going inside one day and having his way with the T.O.?
And now here he was, the new T.O. himself, and his blood sang in his veins with every step.
“. . . your crew will meet you in two hours in the briefing room,” Shane was saying. “In the meantime, you can have lunch and get refreshed.”
“Yes, Sir.”
They reached Mark’s new quarters, and Shane pressed his palm to the lock. The door snicked open. Mark crossed the threshold with his heart in his throat.
“Aren’t you coming in?” he asked Shane.
Shane’s face hardened, but he stepped into the room. “I’m still your commanding office— Mmm—”
Mark crushed the rest of Shane’s words on his lips, pushing into the kiss, driving it with all the weight of five years’ longing. He held tight, then pulled back, panting, to look at his C.O.
“Huh,” said Shane, bringing a hand up and rubbing his lips. Then he pulled Mark into another kiss, this one gentler but much deeper, all controlled energy. Soft skin and hard teeth, negotiating and giving and taking until they had to come up for air.
Mark licked his lips and tasted Shane on them. “Now that,” he said, “was worth every second of OCS.”
Shane sits with Mark and Alex in the garden. He’s nervous as hell, constantly glancing around.
“Relax,” Alex says. “You look guilty.”
“I’m not supposed to do this, am I?”
“Do you want to?”
Shane nods.
“Then let’s do it. Gently. Don’t even go near the cage. And pull back if you feel you can’t handle it.”
“Okay.”
Shane draws a deep breath, then takes Mark’s hand in both of his. “Ready, partner?”
Mark doesn’t answer, of course.
“Okay,” Shane says again, and eases in.
The stench of the POW camp—burnt flesh and urine and blood—hits him like a plasma cannon to the nose. He reels back and finds himself in the garden, on the bench, panting as if he’s run a marathon. Alex is rubbing soothing circles on his back.
“Easy now,” the big nurse says. “Breathe.”
Shane tries, but it feels as if he’s not getting enough oxygen, and he’s panicking for real now—where’s his mask—he has to help Pauline and Doug, he has to—
“Hey!”
He’s shaking. No, Alex is shaking him gently.
“Stay with me, mate. We’re in Rigsby Psychiatric Ward. The garden. You’re sitting on a bench. Can you feel it? Come on, Shane, touch the bench.”
“Touch the bench?” Shane says dazedly. His tongue feels like someone else’s organ, foreign in his mouth. “That’s the stupidest thing anyone has ever said to me. And Mark has told me some stupid things before.”
Alex laughs; Shane can tell he’s relieved. “All right, all right. No more Resonating with Mark anytime soon, I think.”
“No.” Shane takes Mark’s hand in his own again and squeezes gently. “I’m sorry, buddy. I’m sorry. I swear I’ll get you out of there.”
Beside him, Alex nods.
Mark stares blankly ahead.
Mark entered the briefing room, where fourteen pilots snapped to attention and saluted. Part of him felt ridiculous as he saluted back.
“At ease,” he said, and the pilots took their seats. “We’ll be playing Red vs. Blue today. Live drill. Fighters One through Seven will be Blue Wing. Fighters Eight through Fourteen, you’re Red. We’ll be playing the debris field next to Fort Sigma Two . . .”
By the time he finished laying down the rules, his pilots were eager and fidgety. He dismissed them, waited until they filed out, and then headed for the bridge.
Shane’s post at the front was empty. Mark swallowed his disappointment and took his position at the tactical displays. He surveyed the screens. No traffic was entering or leaving Fort Sigma Two, a deep-space base where they’d docked for repairs. Good conditions for practice.
“Blue Four ready to drop,” Mitchell reported on the comm.
“Stand by, Blue Four,” Mark said. Hotshot.
He waited until the entire two wings, Red and Blue, called in ready. Then he looked up at Shane’s post for confirmation. It was still empty. Huh. Unlike Shane to be late for a drill.
He turned to Pauline in Navigation. “Any word from the lieutenant commander?”
“No, Sir,” she answered. “Should I contact him?”
“Beep him. Gently.”
No response from Shane. Mark sighed and looked at the clock. 12:24:37, Earth Time. The seconds count seemed half-catatonic. “Are we getting a network signal here?” he asked Pauline.
She tapped at her station’s keyboard, her fingers moving so fast it sounded like compressed thunder. “Barely,” she said. “We’re picking up a low signal from the fort.”
“Play us a movie,” Doug called from his post.
Mark swiveled in his chair to send the gunnery officer a cooling stare. “Stream the latest news packets.”
Pauline tapped away. The bridge speakers came to life with a tinny female voice.
“And on the news tonight: Tension is rising around Redoren VII, Earth’s chartered mining colony—olony—olony. The R—Redoren government is demanding fees above and beyond those agreed upon in the contract, so—so—so—so claims the Minister of Galactic Trade. In a press conference today, Rear Admiral McKenzie announced that Earth ‘will not pay ransom-like prices for a planet it virtually owns by right of settlement.’ Extremists have called for action—n—n—n—n—n—”
“Shut it down,” Mark said. Lousy signal.
“Do you think there’ll be a war?” Pauline asked.
Mark shrugged. “Not over mining fees. It’s stupid.”
“Earth is stupid,” Doug said from his post.
“Hey, watch it,” Pauline countered. “That’s our home planet you’re talking about.”
“And yet it’s called ‘soil.’ How inventive.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Attention!” Mark called. “Officer on deck.”
The squabbling stopped. Everyone rose and saluted Shane, who stalked with classic grace to his post up front.
“At ease,” he said. “What’s our status?”
Mark surveyed his console lights. “All ready for the drill, Sir.”
“There’ll be no drill,” Shane said. He turned in his swivel chair to face them all. “I’ve just received new orders. The Cyclopes is to Punch through to Althea III and assume patrol in the area.”
What’s on Althea III? Mark wanted to ask, but the grimness in Shane’s face dissuaded him.
“Navigation, disengage from docking,” Shane ordered.
“Aye aye, Sir.”
Pauline exchanged words with the fort’s docking manager, and within a minute, the Cyclopes juddered free of its docking cradle. Auxiliary thrusters pushed it gently away into space.
“Critical speed,” Shane ordered.
“All fighters, prepare for Punch,” Mark said to his people.
The Cyclopes began to accelerate, going faster and faster until it reached the point where Punch’s laws of Space Folding were within its reach.
“Navigation, do you have the coordinates?”
“Aye, Sir!”
“Punch!”
The air around Mark turned thick and sluggish, as did his heartbeat. For a moment, reality stretched around them. Then it snapped to place and time, and Mark saw a new view on the main screen.
“Punch maneuver successful,” Pauline reported.
Shane swiveled back to face the front screen. “Put us in orbit around Althea III.”
Alex has pushed all the chairs to the
perimeter of the room. Standing in the middle, Shane feels like a person on trial in the midst of a ghost jury.
“Lie down,” Alex says.
“On the floor?” Shane starts to ask, but Alex has already put words to action by doing so himself.
Shane joins him, stretching out flat on his back and stiff as a board, teeth clenched. He’s lying on the floor in an empty room, damn it. There’s nothing sinister about that.
“Take a deep breath,” Alex says, and demonstrates.
Shane copies him, but his own deep breath ends on a snort and he bursts out laughing.
“Sorry,” he says. “Sorry.”
He tries again, and snorts again, and laughs.
“It’s okay to be nervous,” Alex says. They’re lying head-to-head, their bodies angled away from each other, but their voices echo in the closeness. Alex’s voice is as deep and big as Alex himself.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Shane says.
It’s for Mark, he reminds himself. He’s doing it for Mark.
He manages a full deep breath, then a snorted one, and then another deep breath.
“Good. Good.” Alex’s voice is soothing. “Now, picture somewhere safe. Somewhere you enjoy being.”
Shane thinks, the Cyclopes, and his entire body tenses.
“You’re not breathing at all now,” Alex notes. “That can’t be too enjoyable. What are you thinking about?”
“The living room,” Shane says firmly, and creates that image in his mind: the faux-wood floor; the wall-mounted holoscreen; the aquarium wall opposite it; the endless shelves with Mark’s books; and at the center of it all, the plush, off-white sofa, with Shane and Mark cuddled together and Mr. Furrypants nestled between them, wheezing in his sleep, one crooked fang protruding out of his upturned mouth.
It’s all so real that Shane can feel it, smell it, and for a moment he is content.
“Good.” Alex voice swathes him like a blanket, warm and near and soft. “Good. Now I want you to keep thinking of the living room. Walk around it. Look at the details. And tell me about the Cyclopes.”
The name jolts Shane—it always does—but he’s too preoccupied with keeping the image of their living room vivid in his mind.
“My ship,” he says, and imagines himself making a circuit of the room. “Shot down in the war.”
He stops to look down at Mark on the sofa. Sleeping peacefully, with that boyish grace that sparked appreciation in Shane—and some jealousy—the moment he first saw it.
“You were there when it happened?”
“My ship,” he says again, because really, that answers the question.
In his vision, Mark has curly hair that reaches his shoulders, the way Shane likes it. Not the close-cropped haircut of—of somewhere else. He doesn’t want to think about it. He knows every vein of copper and gold in those curls, he knows the riches of the sapphire eyes under those peaceful eyelids.
“But you survived.”
He did. Others didn’t. Doug and Pauline—
He turns to the holoscreen in his vision, concentrating on its minor details, the buttons, the small tear where Mr. Furrypants had once pinned a fly.
“We used to watch reruns of Why Dang It,” he says, panting with the effort. “I never liked that show. Mark got me addicted.”
Alex’s ethereal voice sounds far away. “What’s your favorite episode?”
“The one with the rat in the attic,” he says, and it comes more easily this time. “Hilarious.”
The remote is nowhere to be seen—they always misplace it. Then there’s the inevitable argument about whose turn it is to get up and switch channels or turn up the sound.
He concentrates on looking for the remote and says, “The others didn’t make it. Suffocated.”
Alex’s voice floats gently down to him. “Tell me about the others.”
“We can never find the remote,” Shane says. “They died. I couldn’t help them. Mr. Furrypants always sleeps on the remote, the stupid cat.”
It was helping, his focus on everyday details. As long as he didn’t say more than a few words at a time about the Cyclopes, he could ride out the memories, let them surge somewhere in the deep of his brain without pulling him under. A dangerous riptide, those memories, always waiting for him to wander too close—
“Shane, stay with me in the living room.”
The living room, right. The aquarium wall is lovely, though he rarely admits it. It was his mother’s idea, and when he saw Mark’s enthusiasm he couldn’t say no. Now he enjoys watching the fish swim in the partition between living room and dining area. There’s something soothing about their slick, sure movements. Mark would have made a good fish; he has their grace.
Now he has their silence, too, and their dead-eyed stare.
Shane starts and hits his head on the floor and really, that’s too much even for him. He can’t ignore Rigsby Psychiatric Ward anymore.
He sits up, grunting.
“All right there?” Alex asks.
“Yeah.”
Alex sits up as well. “No flashback?”
“No.”
They look at each other, the implications of Shane’s answer hanging pregnant between them. Shane feels silly with excitement.
“Baby steps,” Alex reminds him.
“Yeah, I know.” He stretches, pops his spine and neck.
“Enough for today?”
“Oh yes.”
Alex chuckles. “That’s all right. You did good, Shane.”
Shane looks at him, really looks at him for the first time that day. Alex’s brown eyes remind him of mammals swimming in the depth. There’s something there—a shiver of recognition, and then it’s gone.
“Thanks,” he says, and gets up to visit Mark again.
Tousled sheets, scattered clothes, and a half-empty water bottle. Mark surveyed Shane’s room with a faint smile. It was the most disorderly he’d ever seen the place. The most disorderly he’d ever seen Shane himself: naked, sprawled all over the bed, and snoring. Or perhaps heavenly was a better description.
Mark turned onto his back and hooked his hands under his head. From this new vantage point, he could just make out Shane’s chest, rising and falling with his breaths. It was a soothing sight. He got lost in it for a long moment. When he glanced at Shane’s face, he found the lieutenant commander was now awake and watching him.
“Morning,” he said.
Shane twisted onto his side to face him. “It’s never morning in space.”
Mark chuckled. “Aren’t we cheerful.”
Shane smiled, but no amusement spilled through their Resonance link. Only concern.
“Come on,” Mark said. “Let me give you a back rub.”
Shane raised an eyebrow but turned obediently and settled facedown. Mark straddled his hips and wrenched his mind away from the thought of making love again. Shane’s deltoids felt like corded titanium under his fingers. He kneaded tighter and won a groan in reply.
“You’re tense,” he said after a while.
Shane hummed in agreement.
“What’s up?”
Shane didn’t reply, though he did arch into Mark’s hands. Mark continued massaging for a long moment. Then he rolled off Shane and pushed on his shoulder until they were both lying on their sides, face-to-face.
“Shane. What’s up?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry, I’m just wound up.”
“Hey.” Mark framed Shane’s face with his palms, absorbing his heat and reflecting it. “It’s me, Mark. Your Resonance partner. You can share.”
Shane huffed and shook his face free. But the tight ball of his feelings became less prickly, and he said, “I was thinking . . . If one of us gets hurt . . .”
“Do you think there’ll be a war?” Mark asked.
“I don’t know. No one’s consulting me.”
Mark narrowed his eyes. “But you have a theory.”
Shane pushed himself away, reached the wall, turned, and paced
in the opposite direction. “I think all the talks about high fees are an excuse. Earth is spoiling for a war.”
“And you think the Cyclopes will be involved?”
“I think . . .” Shane turned on his heel and, for a moment, locked stares with Mark. “I think Althea III is awfully close to Redoren VII.”
Shane steers Mark this way and that around the garden, enjoying the breeze and the chirping of birds and the quiet of it all, except for the chanting of Bible Man.
“We’re almost there,” he tells Mark. “I can feel it. I’ll be coming for you soon.”
He’s full of nervous energy that he can’t work out of his system, no matter how many turns they take about the garden.
“You’d like Alex,” he says. “He’s a good man. A kind giant, like in your books.” And he says, “God, I miss you. Can you even hear me? Or am I talking to myself here?”
Mark stops when Shane does but doesn’t look him in the eye. Shane turns them face-to-face, holds Mark’s shoulders, and peers into his eyes.
“You there, buddy?”
But he isn’t. Or if he is, he’s locked behind that terrible metal cage.
“Shane?”
He startles at Alex’s voice from across the garden, snatches his hands from Mark’s shoulders.
Alex walks over and says, “Hello, Mark,” and Shane loves him for it.
“I was just,” Shane says. “I was telling him—”
Alex waves him off. “That’s between you two.”
Shane nods, relieved.
“I’ve been thinking,” Alex says. “I always see you around here. When was the last time you’ve taken some time off for yourself?”
“I don’t need it.”
“Shane . . .”
“We’re close, damn it. Can’t you feel it? I can work past the flashbacks now.” He takes Mark’s hand in his own and faces Alex. “I want to blast that cage out of his mind so bad I can smell the explosion. Don’t make me stop now. Please.”
Alex watches him with concern, with admiration, with cautious hope, and just when has Shane gotten so good at reading him?
“All right,” Alex says. “All right. We’ll try the cage next week.”
