by Joshua Guess
Her team was already in the large work space set aside for her use, each of them carefully following instructions as they repaired their own suits. Beck waved a hello and pulled a stool up to her own armor. Whatever else she might become, she would always be a mechanic at heart.
Eshton stepped past her at one point and briefly rested a hand on her shoulder. She smiled without looking away from her work.
“How’d the meeting go?” he asked in a low voice. “They talk you into working as an administrator full time yet?”
Beck pulled a disgusted face. “Wash your mouth out, young man. I’ll help out where I’m needed, and if that means being the face of all this, that’s fine. But I’m not getting chained to a desk. There will still be Pales out there until the drone fleet is ready to blanket the badlands.”
“Plus a bunch of other threats,” he said in a long-suffering tone. “Yeah, I’ve heard it. You can’t deny you’re good at this stuff.” He knelt next to her and put a hand on her forearm. “Of course, you can just walk away if you want to. No one would blame you. If I had any way to know what was coming, I might never have looked for you after you left the chapterhouse the day your parents died. If I’d have let you go, it would have saved you a lot of hurt.”
Beck shrugged. “But look what we got out of it. I just hope I’d have made them proud. Sometimes I wonder, after all the things I’ve had to do.”
“You stopped a war,” Eshton said. “I think they’d be thrilled with the woman you’ve become.”
She let her eyes sweep across the shop, over the loyal friends who had begun to occupy the space left behind by the deaths that had nearly ended her. They carried scars, each of them, whether physical or in their hearts. Wojcik with his new hand. Tala with the fading lines across her face. Jen, now more reserved than Beck had ever seen her. Lucia, whose bright eyes carried a harder edge than before. Jeremy, who had come back from his last mission shaken to the core.
And Eshton, a paradox. The man who had taken the lives of those Beck held most dear, who never shied away or shifted blame. Who showed her a core of nobility in the Deathwatch she never knew existed. It was that moment of compassion, the raw sorrow for her loss, which ultimately convinced her to join. He showed her that nothing was ever as simple as it seemed. That grace could be found in the most unlikely places.
Walk away? When the people she loved had risked and lost so much to move them toward a better world?
Never.
The oath was always there to remind her. Through hard times and good, she would stand her watch.
Epilogue
One Year Later
“We’re supposed to be scouting for a new settlement,” Beck said with a laugh as Eshton tried to wrestle her to the ground. “But I’m pretty sure you brought me out here hoping the landscape would put me in the mood.”
“You’re only saying that because I’ve done that a couple times,” he replied with a grin. “Using my own behavior against me is harsh and unfair.”
According to the maps Parker had helpfully filled in, the place was a favorite spot of his from childhood. She and Eshton were half a mile from their transport and the rest of the survey team, though it might as well have been a world away. The scattered damage caused during the Collapse had missed this place, once part of a national forest. Ancient trees reached a hundred feet and more into the sky, branches splayed with brilliant green. The clearing around them was uneven and split on one end by a break in the ground through which a small waterfall babbled and churned. Wildflowers dotted the grassy slope, reds and oranges burning against the verdant backdrop.
“It’s nice,” she said, dancing nimbly out of his grip. Just to put a point on how little she thought of his efforts, she slipped a foot out and tripped him.
“Oof,” he grunted as he tumbled to the ground. “Okay, you win. I give up.”
He flipped over on his back and closed his eyes, luxuriating in the soft embrace of the earth. Beck couldn’t help smiling at the sight. Was this the same hardened agent, the one with countless lives on his conscience?
He was, she decided, but also not. It never ceased to amaze her how much being out in the world changed people. The vids they brought back from these survey runs were propaganda of the best sort. Twelve months of showing people what was out there did wonders for cooperation. The beauty still left on their damaged world was powerful. She wished they could do more to make those people understand. Seeing was good, but smelling—feeling—made it real in ways video never could.
Even so, the human race was beginning to unite much as it had under the Tenets, only this time with a brighter look at the future. The driving force was no longer some abstract date when a future generation might step into the wild and live as the men of the old world had. It was now.
The drone fleets made sure of it. Thousands of them running day and night, watching from the skies for any sign of Pales and dusting them with the cure when found. Other fleets kept wary eyes for survivors. Fewer survived the process than Beck had hoped, but more than any of them expected.
There were always problems. That was unavoidable when human beings were involved. Disagreements about how to progress remained, and the complexities of the new government entangled those efforts at every turn.
Yet all told, Beck couldn’t complain. No matter how annoying or frustrating it might be at times, she saw something in her people that made every headache and setback worth it a hundredfold.
Hope. Real, honest hope. It would take centuries for the world to heal, but humanity was already on its way.
She settled into the grass next to Eshton, who looked dangerously close to falling asleep. She closed her eyes and let the sun shine on her face, and let herself fall into a state of being more and more common of late.
Beck found a moment of perfect joy. A bliss destined to be finite, and that was as it should be. In the last year, she had finally stopped wondering what her family would think of the places she surveyed, instead finding contentment in knowing they would be happy for her to see them.
At long last, she was no longer haunted by their memory. Instead she explored this new world to create her own.
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Also by Joshua Guess
The Fall (Completed Series)
Victim Zero
Dead Will Rise
War of the Living
Genesis Game
Exodus in Black
Revelation Day
Beyond The Fall
Relentless Sons
The Faded Earth
Deathwatch
Song of the Badlands
Men of Stone
The Ghost Fleet
Cascade Point
Borderlander
Carter Ash
The Saint
The Next Chronicle
Next
Damage
Cassidy Freeman
Chosen
Living With the Dead
With Spring Comes The Fall
The Bitter Seasons
Year One (With Spring Comes The Fall, The Bitter Seasons, bonus material)
The Hungry Land
The Wild Country
This New Disease
American Recovery
Ever After
Black Sand
Earthfall
Ran
Apocalyptica
This Broken Veil
Misc
Beautiful (An Urban Fantasy)(Novel)
Soldier Lost (Short Story)
Dog Dreams In Color (Short Story)
With James Cook
The Passenger (Surviving The Dead)