Countdown (The Shadow Wars Book 9)

by S. A. Lusher

  Greg could never decide.

  As he started to clean himself off with some soap, (and to clean Eve off too, even though she didn't really need it), he tried to push his mind to other thoughts. And he did, though they were about as equally distressing.

  After the whole thing with Rogue Ops had finally finished up, at least in the way that they weren't going to unleash some inter-dimensional nightmare on the galaxy, everyone had been rounded up and brought back. And right now, Hawkins was doing everything he could to keep them out of prison or worse, trying to explain that this handful of mercenaries and soldiers had, in fact, saved everyone everywhere from horrible death.

  “Hey, you okay? I mean, I know you're still freaked but, I guess I mean...how are you doing?” Eve asked. She was still clearly tired.

  He smiled and wrapped her in a hug. “I'll be fine,” he said. “Just need to get back to sleep. I should be fine tomorrow.”

  Eve rubbed her hands across his back. “You're nervous about meeting your parents. It's understandable,” she replied.

  “Yeah...”

  She didn't know the half of it.

  They finished showering off and he killed the water. Stepping out, they each grabbed a towel and began drying off. Greg caught a look at himself in the mirror above the sink and didn't like what he saw. He was really starting to look like crap. Ha. Starting. He'd looked like crap since he woke up on Dis two months ago.

  Had it really been two months?

  He took a moment to study his sunken eyes, the way they were bloodshot, his pale pallor. He kept his hair and beard buzzed pretty much to stubble, and he thought it helped sort of mask how crappy he looked. Hopefully a good night's sleep would help get rid of some of the effects. Though he imagined he'd be lucky to get one of those.

  “Come on,” Eve said.

  They'd finished drying off and now he was just staring at himself in the mirror. She took his hand and guided him back into the bedroom, into the cool, ethereal blue light of the planet below. He felt a wave of lethargy sweep over him that only grew more powerful as the pair of them got back under the blankets together.

  Eve moved against him. “Think you'll be able to get back to sleep?” she asked.

  “I hope so,” he replied.

  “I could help with that,” she said, getting on top of him.

  He couldn't help but smile.

  * * * * *

  The next morning, Greg felt a bit better.

  He ended up sleeping in until noon, pretty late for him, since he'd apparently settled into what must have been his old routine during that month gap where things were relatively quiet aboard the Atonement. Back then, he'd been getting up at around eight and was in bed by midnight. Eve, on the other hand, hated it and was adjusting. She was a night owl and didn't like to crash out until three or four in the morning.

  She was still asleep when he woke up.

  He carefully got out of bed, figuring he could easily waste another hour or so, letting her sleep. Eve was great and he honestly wanted to spend time with her but...she was also very grumpy when she was waking up. As he stood and began making for the bathroom however, Greg froze as he heard her shift in the bed.

  “Hey...what time is it?” she asked, her voice groggy.

  “Noon,” he replied.

  “Ugh, this is bullshit,” she muttered.

  “You can sleep some more if you want...”

  But she was already sitting up, rubbing at her eyes. The blankets fell away from her, exposing her bare chest. “No, no. This is a big day for you, I'm not going to ruin it by being lazy.” She yawned and stretched, only causing him to stare further. “What are you looking at?”

  “Your boobs,” he replied.

  She rolled her eyes. “Of course.” She pulled the blanket back and stood up, popping her back, then her neck. “Well, I can't blame you. Boobs are awesome. Come on, let's have a long, hot shower together and maybe have some vacation slash wake up sex. Sound good to you?”

  “More than good,” Greg replied.

  They headed into the bathroom together.

  * * * * *

  After they'd showered, Greg had briefly toyed around with the idea of really, actually shaving his face, but he didn't want to. He wasn't sure why, he just didn't want to, and he was stressed out enough as it was so he just left it at that. As it was, he made sure to put on deodorant and brush his teeth and put on something that wasn't a jumpsuit. The cruise ship was big enough to accommodate more than a few gift shops and he'd spent a long, long time, an embarrassing amount of time actually, going through them.

  He just didn't know what was...normal. How did normal people dress? Or, a step further, how did cool people dress? It was something that he hadn't actually said out loud, but it was a concern he had. The best he'd been able to do during the downtime aboard the Atonement had been generic jeans and a plain black t-shirt. To be completely honest, he felt...strange, if he wasn't wearing jumpsuit and some power armor.

  After a lot of deliberation, he'd finally settled on some black cargo pants and, (at a bit of insistence from Eve), a form-fitting black t-shirt with a big crimson biohazard logo across it. Eve just wanted something that showed off his physique, and he couldn't blame her, because he loved it when she wore something that showcased her amazing ass, her great thighs or her fantastic breasts. He wasn't sure why the biohazard symbol in bleeding crimson that almost seemed to glow had called to him at first, but after a lot of pondering, he finally had it.

  It reminded him of his time on Dis.

  He knew what a biohazard was, had seen it in the background aboard the Rogue Ops ship occasionally. If there was one symbol to represent the Undead, it would be that symbol. So why did he want it scrawled across his chest?

  Eve, on the other hand, apparently had no problem slipping back into what she called 'normal' or 'civvie' life. She had spent a lot of time being normal. Not having to go out to isolated, often atmospherically compromised locations and fight inhuman monsters like he had. So she was kind of acting as his guide in all this.

  Greg made sure to pack everything they'd brought with them or bought over the course of the three-day trip, (which was not very much at all, they'd gotten used to traveling and living light), into a single black duffel bag. They were leaving today. Greg had initially been worried about basically using the cruise ship as a glorified taxi service, but a bit of investigation had revealed that they were very open to this.

  How it worked was, the cruise space ship, which was easily four times the size the Atonement had been, went on a trip through several solar systems that lasted about a month. It visited just over a dozen planets. People could get on, and off, the ship, pretty much whenever they wanted. Some people treated it like a genuine cruise and stayed the whole month, visiting every planet, and some people, like Greg and Eve, just used it as a method of pampered travel.

  “You look handsome,” Eve said as they walked down the hall together, away from their room, after making sure they had everything.

  “Thanks,” Greg replied, a little awkwardly. It was great to know that your girlfriend thought you looked good, but he still didn't know entirely how to respond to it. “You look pretty amazing yourself,” he replied.

  And she did.

  She was wearing a white tanktop that showed off a lot of cleavage and some blue, loose fitting running shorts. Her red hair was in a loose ponytail.

  “Thanks,” she replied, sounding more at ease than he did, just another little item to add to the list of things that made Greg remember the fact that his girlfriend was twenty years older than him. A fact he quite liked.

  They made their way through the hotel area they were staying in and took an elevator down to the shuttle bay. Although he felt rested from his extra sleep and awake from his shower, he was now getting nervous. It struck him as funny: he could face down intergalactic soldiers and horrors from beyond the stars without too much trouble, but having to do something personal...no, that was too much. Gave h
im butterflies and tremors.

  Maybe it was just that he knew he couldn't fight his way out of this situation. Maybe it because he knew there was no 'out'...this was something he just had to face head on. That's what scared him. The elevator came to a halt. They stepped out, finding that the hangar wasn't too busy. Everyone was either at lunch or had already gone down to the planet's surface already. He held Eve's hand as they walked across the large, open space, making their way towards one of the few docking bays that still held a shuttle that could take them to the surface.

  They got inside, making sure to let the cruise ship know that they were leaving for good and wouldn't be coming back. Hawkins had given them two weeks. In all actuality, they'd been given a month, and they'd already spent two of those weeks on Mezzanine, kicking back and relaxing like they'd all promised themselves they would after all the shit they'd been through. But the vacation had come and gone and still the Galactic Alliance didn't have their shit together, so Hawkins had given them another two weeks.

  Everyone had left, though Greg didn't know where the others had gone. He'd chosen to take the extra time to go see his parents. He thought about what that might bring as the shuttle moved away from the cruise ship and began burning down through the atmosphere. He'd already seen pictures of his parents, his home colony, even the exterior of the house he'd grown up in. Nothing had rattled loose upon seeing these photos.

  The planet he lived on was called Azure. It was a pretty basic colony world started thirty years ago. His parents had been part of the second wave of colonists that had arrived after the first had staked a claim and proved the planet was worth living on. They were both Security-Investigations, just like him. Security side. He was hoping, praying, at this point, that seeing them would light the fuse that was his memories.

  Maybe it could give him his life back.

  Only, at this point, he had to wonder...what did that even mean? He had a life now. He was Greg Bishop, a man who had faced down undead horrors, an insane AI and whatever else the galaxy had decided to throw at him on his quest to stop the bad guys and save the human race. Did he want to give that up? Would he even be himself anymore? If his old memories reasserted themselves, would he lose all the others?

  Would he lose his identity?

  He glanced over at Eve. She was staring out the window, but seemed to sense his gaze on her and looked back at him.

  “You doing okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah, just nervous,” he replied, a little lamely. He was more than nervous, he was wrestling with metaphysical, philosophical questions of reality itself. But he really didn't want to dump that all on her. She was probably dealing with her own problems...though, if he was being honest, Greg couldn't actually remember her complaining about much of anything besides Enzo, and that had pretty much stopped since he was gone.

  He suddenly wondered about their relationship. How much had Eve actually opened up to him? Okay, she'd let him inside of her lots of times since they'd started dating but...that didn't mean she'd necessarily opened up to him. In fact, something he'd picked up on as he relearned how to be human, was that, if anything, it might be a nice distraction tactic to keep her from genuinely opening up to him...what did that mean?

  Well, for now it meant that he was glad she was there, glad she was his girlfriend, and maybe she was just really competent and in control of her life. Maybe she had no big problems. Or, if she did, she'd tell him, when and if she was ready.

  Greg looked out the window.

  They were coming in over the colony now, making for the local starport.

  * * * * *

  The crowd was making Greg nervous.

  As far as he knew Rogue Operations were pretty much done for. What was left of their personnel were either trapped in isolated locations, hiding or running for their lives. Some were even in prison now, rounded up by the military. But that didn't make him really believe that there wasn't some assassin coming for him and the others. Looking for revenge maybe. Not to mention he still hadn't entirely gotten over the feeling of being influenced, being...controlled, by that inter-dimensional horror right at the end there.

  As it was, he was trying to keep himself under control. The terminal wasn't that packed. There were maybe a hundred people in his field of vision. When he'd overflown the colony, Greg had hoped that some of it would look familiar, but, of course, that hadn't been the case. According to his history, he had grown up here. Spent his entire life here before shipping out after going through SI training and heading for Dis over a year ago.

  Dis...

  He was still concocting a plan to tell his parents. He'd gotten it mostly together but was relying on his own admission of memory loss to help cover any holes, and he felt at least somewhat confident that he'd be able to get them to believe it. Plus, Eve was there to help him make it more convincing. He'd decided that it would absurd to tell them truth or anything resembling it. Even he didn't always believe all the things that had happened to him.

  The terminal interior fell away as he and Eve stepped outside. It was gray, the skies overcast and gloomy. It was raining lightly. There were a row of taxis waiting alongside the front of the terminal, prepared to bring people to wherever they wanted to go. Greg and Eve crossed the distance and got into the back of one.

  “Where to?” the man driving the vehicle asked.

  Greg gave him the address and sat back, staring out the window as the taxi pulled out and away, making its slow journey into the colony. He began studying the buildings, the streets, the people. Looking for anything that might be familiar. Landmarks, old friends, old haunts. But it all looked like just another colony to him. Storefronts and vehicles and rain-slicked streets. A handful of people out and about with umbrellas and raincoats. It could have been anywhere. Really, it reminded him of Grimsfall more than anything else.

  Not exactly happy times.

  “You doing okay?” Eve asked.

  “Yeah, I guess so...” He glanced over at her. “Not really.”

  “It's normal that you're nervous. Hell, I still get nervous whenever I go home and see my parents again. We never got along.”

  Greg laughed. “Yeah, but that's all...regular shit. I mean...what if I'm like a huge disappointment or what if we parted on terrible terms and it'll be awkward? What if something's change? I sure have. I mean, I left the planet, went out to the middle of nowhere.”

  “Stop worrying yourself over what ifs,” Eve said. “What ifs usually don't happen, and even when they do they aren't nearly as bad as we think they're going to be. Pretty soon we'll be there and you'll know for sure.”

  Greg sighed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  He sat back and tried to wait patiently.

  * * * * *

  Greg felt his pulse quicken as the taxi slowed to a halt, pulling up in front of a two story house of painted blue metal. Pretty much all the buildings in the colony were made of metal, since it was cheaper to manufacture now than anything else. He studied it through the rain-streaked window, chewing nervously on his lower lip. He'd told his parents that he was coming in an e-mail. They had wanted to chat over visual link, but he said he wanted to see them in person. He regretted keeping them in the dark but it seemed necessary.

  The house took up a medium-sized plot of land. The lawn out front was neat, trim, well-maintained. A chainlink fence ran around the perimeter and a large tree grew in the center of the yard. It sparked nothing in his memory.

  Greg paid the taxi driver and he and Eve got out. They moved through the gate, which slid open as they approached, and walked up the sidewalk, alongside a driveway with a sleek black two-door vehicle in it. It looked new, expensive, nice. Apparently his parents were doing well in SI. He and Eve made it onto the front porch when the door opened. A woman who must have been his mother, she certainly resembled the photograph he'd seen, rushed out onto the porch and wrapped him in a tight hug. His father stood in the doorway.

  “Greg, good lord, it's been too long. We were so worrie
d!” she said.

  “I'm okay,” he replied, slowly hugging her back.

  After a moment, she let go of him and took a step back, perhaps sensing his awkwardness. He stared into her face for a moment. What struck him was how she didn't really seem like a parent. Or, rather, she didn't look like one. Then again, he hadn't seen many parents. She looked like everyone else he'd worked with. That was one of the weird things about living in an age where affordable beauty and youth was so common. You could be twenty, forty, sixty or even eighty, and still look practically the same.

  She had short, auburn hair and bright blue eyes. She was of a thin build, maybe five and a half feet, wearing sweat pants and a long-sleeved shirt. His father stood in the door. He did, indeed, resemble the face that Greg saw when he looked in the mirror. Tall, rangy build, short black hair, fierce blue eyes, strong chin. He wore jeans and a t-shirt.

  “Um, hello, I'm Alicia,” his mother said as she finally seemed to notice Eve standing a bit awkwardly to the side.

  “Eve,” Eve replied, taking and shaking her hand.

  “Tom,” his father said, joining them and shaking her hand. “Greg, it's good to finally have you home. Why don't you come in and you can tell us what...uh, happened to you out there?”

  “Sounds good...dad,” he replied.

  They all went into the house. Greg took it all in as they moved into a corridor with several open doorways. There was what looked like the kitchen at the end of the hallway, they passed a dining room to the right, some stairs took up half the hallway, leading to the second story and no doubt the bedrooms.

  They came into the living room.

  None of it looked familiar. Not in the slightest.