Epilogue

Background color
Font
Font size
Line height

"You know, as far as plans go, that last one was a real shitshow," Greg said, staring across the desk at Gibson. The man seemed to have traded his snowy mountain view for one of deep space, the windows behind him showing the distant pinpoints of lights against an obsidian curtain.

"Sorry about that," Gibson replied, finally looking up from his datapad and setting it aside. "We were under a hell of a time crunch, working with limited resources, and against a huge group of alien monstrosities that were actively, continually trying to kill us all. To be honest, I'm amazed it worked at all. But you and your team really did come through."

Greg sighed. "Yeah, we did. It cost a lot though."

"Doesn't it always?" Gibson said, his mood darkening.

"Not always, but too often." Greg rubbed his temples for a moment. "What's the count?"

"About fifty two percent," Gibson said.

Greg sighed heavily. Jesus. There had been three million people on Wintermute when the outbreak occurred. It had been two weeks since they'd killed the Proto-Gravemind and begun, in earnest, the evacuation of the planet. It was a daunting prospect even without the four-day window, but their operation had saved probably a million lives. It had been a near thing. The Elite fleet had arrived ahead of UNSC forces and had been all set to glass the whole planet with barely an hour's warning, but those in charge had finally managed to convince them that the Proto-Gravemind was, indeed, dead. After that, the rest of the UNSC task force assigned to help deal with this arrived and so began the somehow slow but rushed process of evacuating a whole planet.

It was difficult as hell. Mostly those four days involved getting people actually physically off the planet in literally anything that could sustain human life in orbit around it, taking care of anyone who was injured, and ensuring that no Flood got off the planet as well. Using the search parameters that had been put together to find the Proto-Gravemind, many ships were upgraded with the software and used to scan for Flood.

That was the most tedious part. The Elites wouldn't let anyone leave the system, under any circumstances, until they were one hundred percent certain that there were no Flood aboard the ship, and the UNSC was with them on this one.

Once the four day window had closed, down to the second, the Elites began the process of glassing the entire planet.

That was a miserable sight to watch.

The next ten days were spent dealing with the refugees. Mostly just keeping them alive while they were slowly filtered out of the system to wherever they could be taken in, even temporarily. The UNSC was bringing in whatever resources they could, but there was still a war on. Sort of. Greg and Task Force Reaper, minus Izzy, much to her chagrin, had spent those four days frantically evacuating people as quickly as possible. Thankfully, there hadn't been all that much offense from the Flood. They seemed to be incoherent and out of it, not nearly as intelligent as they had been becoming near the end there, so they didn't put up much of a fight unless they happened to be hanging around the evac zones. Greg had been on one of the absolute last flights out, getting a scant few civilians who had almost been left behind after their ship had gone down thanks to mechanical problems.

"We're still in the process of getting it all figured out, but we at least know that no one survived on that planet. Everyone who's alive is in orbit, which at least makes it easier to keep tally," Gibson said. "And some people are dying, succumbing to their wounds, but that's slowing down. Ultimately, it looks like we saved about one point six million, give or take a hundred thousand. Which is not an insignificant number."

"No, but neither is one point four million," Greg grunted.

"We did the best we could, Walker. Honestly, it's miracle we did this well."

"I know."

Greg decided not to dwell on that particular fact and instead asked what he'd intended to ask for quite awhile now, but had been too busy to. "What's the word on the war? Is it actually over? I've been hearing all sorts of shit."

"It's over. We won," Gibson said, and Greg let out a long sigh of relief as a tremendous weight was lifted from his soul. "I've been trying to dig through the specifics, but it's hard to know what's conjecture, what's true, what's total BS. The Elites have officially sided with us. We have a tentative alliance that's being negotiated beyond the temporary team-up that apparently happened during the last days of the war. Half of Africa was glassed, apparently, because some Flood got to Earth. Seems like we dodged a bullet there, sort of, as the glassing actually worked. There's been no more reports of Flood on Earth. The Covenant is broken, we have confirmed kills on the Prophet leadership. And, uh, apparently the Covenant discovered a portal on Earth that led to a massive alien installation built just outside the galaxy? I don't know about that one."

"Holy crap, it sounds like we missed a lot," Greg muttered.

"Yeah. But that's the important thing: it's over. It's finally over. We won."

"Thank God...how are the others?" he asked. Before long, with the obvious exception of Izzy, he'd lost track of the people he'd gotten to know down on Wintermute who had survived.

"Ellis is still around here somewhere. She's putting all her time and effort into treating illnesses, setting broken bones, anything medic-related. That woman is a force to be reckoned with, which is good for us. Laney's kind of the same way. I swear that guy needs like four hours of sleep a night. There's been a million little things that need doing in this impromptu fleet of ours and he's volunteered every single time someone's asked him to do something. I think he's repairing guns right now over on another cruiser. Breaker's running maintenance on any and all ships that come his way when he isn't flying supplies and personnel between the cruisers. Baranov and Turner and Yamazaki have all left the system, off doing their own things at this point. Yamazaki has agreed to help with some research on the Flood, just so long as it's in a lab lightyears from here. Larsen has been pitching in as well. And Serrano, well...I imagine you know what she's up to better than I do."

Greg just nodded. So far, no one had said anything about them sharing a cabin, and he hoped it stayed that way.

Something occurred to him, though. "You're keeping awful close tabs on us...any particular reason?"

"Yes, actually," he said, and a look of excitement came onto his tired face. He leaned forward. "It was something I was hoping to talk to you about. Right now, this is all extremely preliminary, hardly out of the 'thinking about it' phase, but my initiative on Wintermute caught someone's attention. Someone higher up than me, someone like-minded about what a threat the Flood are. You and Task Force Reaper performed quite well out there, especially at the end. Now, this isn't exactly an official offer but...how would you feel about continuing to head up Task Force Reaper?"

"What, exactly, would that entail?" Greg asked as he felt a pulse of excitement. He had to admit, he'd been wondering exactly what he would do if the war was indeed truly over.

"At the moment? I don't know specifically beyond 'fighting Flood'. I'm in the very early planning stages of assembling a new branch of the military specifically designed to combat Flood threats. Obviously I need a proof of concept, something beyond Wintermute. And, well, you and your friends are perfectly positioned to do this. What do you think?"

Greg was silent for several long moments. "Have you mentioned this to anyone else?"

"I've made subtle hints to Ellis, Laney, Larsen, and Breaker. Even Baranov. He seemed to perform pretty well. They all said they might be interested. You and Serrano are the last ones left. I figured you'd be best suited to ask her."

"What kind of timeline are we looking at? How long until anything official happens?"

"Oh...months, at least. I'm working on it, but there's a lot going on right now."

"Put me down for a maybe," he said after a moment, and stood. "Izzy will probably also be a maybe, but I'll need to talk with her." He hesitated. "If I did agree to do this, I'd want to do it my way. I don't have a problem with oversight, but I would want to be really in charge of my own squad, I'm just saying that now."

"You performed excellently, I wouldn't have it any other way," Gibson replied.

"Thank you, Master Sergeant."

"You're welcome, Sergeant. Go on, get some rest. You've genuinely earned it."

"We all have. I think I'm going to put in for some goddamned R and R tomorrow."

"I'll see what I can do to get you a transport to somewhere out-of-system."

"I would really appreciate that."

Gibson offered his hand. Greg shook it. "It's been a genuine pleasure working with you, Sergeant. And...think about what I said. All of it. You're in a unique position to help a lot more people. I don't want to be pushy but...not a lot of people get this type of opportunity."

"I will think about it," Greg promised.

He left Gibson's office and made his way through the cruiser that was currently his home. He was glad to see that it was much quieter, much calmer. Now that the worst of the triage had been taken care of, people weren't shouting or running around, desperately carrying the wounded or the dying, shifting direly needed cargo to and from the vessel. Although he'd been getting a bit more sleep lately, he still felt tired.

How long would that last?

He knew Izzy felt similarly. They both could use a break. But before he made any decisions regarding the rest of his life, there was one more thing he needed settled.

Greg came to their shared quarters a few moments later and found Izzy laying in bed, reading from a datapad. Her arm was mostly healed up by now.

"Hey, what'd he have to say?" she asked, setting the datapad aside as he came in.

"He wants to offer us a job fighting Flood," Greg replied.

Her eyebrows shot up. "You shitting me?"

"No. It's all sort of up in the air right now, but he pitched it to the others: Ellis, Breaker, Laney, Baranov, Larsen. They're all 'maybes'. He said I'd be in charge. Basically we'd still be Task Force Reaper, dealing with Flood threats when and if they pop up."

"Shit man, you really wanna fight those things again?" she asked.

"Hell no," he replied, laughing. "God no. But...I mean we already did it once and survived."

"We got lucky," she said, staring at him intently.

"I know. I haven't promised anything. I said I wanted to talk it over with you first. But...that discussion can wait. I want to have a more important discussion with you first."

"More important than whether or not we're going to go fight goddamned space zombies for a living?"

"Yes." He got out of his boots and sat down on the bed cross-legged, staring at her.

"You're kind of freaking me out..." she murmured.

"Sorry, not trying to. But I think it's finally time to talk about it: us. Where, exactly, are you and I, as a couple? Just so we're totally clear."

She sucked in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. "Oh. That." He waited. "Well...where do you think we stand?" she asked.

"Are you really gonna make me go first this time?" he asked.

She sighed heavily. "Okay fine. That's fair. I said I wanted time and you gave me time, and you've gone out on a limb often enough for me as it is. And I appreciate that. So, this is what I'm thinking: I like you. A lot. I want to be a couple. I like where this is going. You're honestly the best guy I've ever dated."

"Is that what we've been doing?" he asked.

"Oh my God, shut up!" she snapped, throwing a pillow at him. "You know what I mean!" She crossed her arms. "So, what say you? You feel like putting up with me some more?"

"I feel like dating you," he replied. Greg reached out and took her hand, then brought it closer to himself and kissed the back of it. "I think you're amazing, and I would love to call you my girlfriend," he said.

"So it's official? We're a couple?"

"It's official. We're a couple," he replied.

"And the other stuff? Fighting the Flood some more?"

"It can wait. We're going on R and R tomorrow. Gibson will help us get out of here."

She grinned suddenly, grabbed him, and pulled him closer to her. "You know what? It's New Year's Eve. Let's not wait to start R and R until tomorrow."

Greg found that he agreed with her immensely.

You are reading the story above: TeenFic.Net