Jack laced up his boots as quietly as he could in the soft light offered by distant stars.
It was dark and quiet in their temporary quarters. He finished up and gently patted his pocket, confirming his cigarettes were there, then began making for the door.
"You going to see your favorite redhead?" Jennifer murmured.
Jack froze. He hadn't realized she'd been up. "I can't sleep. I didn't wanna bug you two with the tossing and turning...and yeah. Among others. I wanna see if he's okay."
Jennifer yawned. He thought they might wake Diaz, but she was out cold. She had shown up, unannounced, three days ago at their quarters and they'd happily let her in. After everything they'd been through, and all that was left to go, they were all in the mood to celebrate.
And he imagined that none of them were sleeping by themselves if they could help it. Sex aside, there was a primal comfort in communal sleeping.
"All right. Don't be gone too long," she said with a yawn.
"I won't." He began to turn away again.
"Hey." He paused and looked back. She was staring at him in the dim light, blanket pulled up around herself, freshly cut brunette hair wild and messy. "I love you."
"I love you too, Jennifer," he replied.
She smiled and settled back down beside Diaz.
Jack slipped out quickly. He'd said those words in past relationships, not often, but he had never meant them as strongly as he did with Jennifer. He didn't really believe in soul mates, but...he knew he wasn't ever leaving her. They were truly 'til death do us part', married or not. Their union had been forged in hellfire, stronger than diamonds.
The corridors of Armstrong Station were brightly lit and clean.
It was officially against regs, but Jack lit up one of his Yeheyuans as he moved through the station. Everyone knew who he was at this point, and being a living legend had its perks. After the shit he'd gone through, he was happy to use at least a few of them.
It had been about a week since the death of the Icon of Sin.
Although they had lost Cortez and Linaweaver during that final battle, Carpenter had been beaten black and blue and knocked unconscious, and Hollenshead had lost an arm, but they had survived. More than that, they'd managed to get the two men out of Hell. The way back had proven to be not nearly as arduous as Jack had feared it might. Diaz had taken an alternate route, and the teleport she'd gone through led, after a few more jumps, to an alternate UAC outpost, one that had survived a bit more intact than the others.
Although it had taken some time, they had finally managed to repair a teleporter that brought them back to a UAC facility in Nevada. It had taken more time to clear out the demons and call for a ride, but they'd done it.
Hollenshead and Carpenter had been shipped off immediately to space, while the rest of them were given twenty four hours of rest, (after a lengthy mandatory debriefing), and then asked to help with the evacuation efforts for at least a few more days.
They'd done it, though finally had put their foot down and gotten shipped up into orbit. They were currently residing aboard Space Station Armstrong for some proper R and R.
It had worked. The theory that killing the Icon would disrupt the forces of Hell had proven extremely true. Worldwide the demons lost their coordination, in most cases devolving into killing each other as much as humans. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was a much-needed break in the bloody slaughter to establish some safe zones, extract crucial supplies and key personnel, and for the most part get people into space as much as they could.
Everyone was waiting for the demons to regain their sense of unity, for some other big bad to pick up the slack and resume the coordinated invasion of Earth and extermination of the human race, but it had yet to happen.
Jack came to his first stop, stubbing out his cigarette on the bottom of his boot and dropping it into his pocket. There were still rules he respected, especially if they made a lot of sense. He stepped into the infirmary and saw that Lance Corporal Bekele, one of the security guards he'd run into while retaking Haydenfield, was on duty. By insane coincidence, the combat medic had found his way up to Armstrong in all the chaos, and he had been the one overseeing Hollenshead.
"Hey Bekele, how is he?" Jack asked.
"Still stable. He should be awake tomorrow," Bekele replied. "His artificial limb is being worked on in the machine shops right now."
"He's gonna want to be back up and kicking demon ass as soon as possible," Jack said.
He laughed softly. "I know. Staff Sergeant Hollenshead is a hell of a fighter. That's why I'm not looking forward to waking him up. I know the type. He'll swear he's fine and fight me every step of the way through rehab."
"How long do you think he'll be down?" Jack asked. It was a miracle that Hollenshead had survived the whole thing, but even after it all, he was still missing most of his left arm. They had cybernetic limbs that could basically do everything an arm or a leg could do, though.
"A few weeks. We've managed to do amazing things with medical science, cut down on a lot of time needed to get used to a new limb, but we still need some time."
Jack nodded. "I'm just grateful he'll get to keep fighting...thanks Bekele."
"You're welcome. And I'll let you know before we wake him."
"Appreciated."
Jack headed back out into the corridors and stalked on. Powell and Carpenter were already gone. Powell was restless, even with all that had happened, and his great skill-set at survival and bravery, combined with the fact that he was part of the crew that had killed the Icon of Sin and basically saved the world, meant he was in extremely high demand. He'd used the opportunity to get a posting in Hawaii. It was still a green zone, and they were doing a lot of cutting edge technical research there, now that patents and funding were meaningless.
Carpenter, after spilling everything he knew about the UAC, everything from codes to secret locations to research, had been put in charge as the administrator of an old orbital refinery platform orbiting Venus. It had been abandoned about a decade ago after the company that owned it went bankrupt, but sold it to the UAC, who had kept it in stable orbit and performed at least basic routine maintenance on it on the off chance they might find use for it again. It had once been used to extract useful stuff from raw materials harvested down on the surface of Venus. Now, it was being refurnished to house some ten thousand survivors.
Jack imagined that there were a ton of ships, stations, colonies, and orbital platforms undergoing the exact same process right now.
There were a lot of people who needed a place to live all of a sudden.
He finally tracked down the little out of the way observation lounge that he, Jennifer, and Kyra had taken to hanging out in. It was hard to find, a little off the beaten trail, (inasmuch as anything could be in an artificial environment), and people seemed to know to leave it alone.
It was where they went to unwind and be alone.
They, the Hell Warriors.
That was what the media had taken to calling them. Already, they'd been through a dozen interviews. And the Brass said more were coming. Shit, he was scheduled to meet with President Romero next week. They'd had their debriefing with General Taggart, and it had been nice to finally meet the man in person.
As he opened the door, sure enough he found Kyra sitting in a couch that faced a huge window looking out on Earth.
She twisted around and looked at him.
"Hey," she said. She sounded a little...lost.
"Hey. You okay?" he replied, relighting his cigarette and then walking to the bar. He grabbed a bottle of brandy and then went and sat next to her on the couch.
"You know...as much as I can be," Kyra replied. She looked over at him, a glass of wine in her hand. She had on a tanktop and some running shorts. She'd also cut her hair pretty short. He had to admit, he really liked the style of both of them. "What are you doing?" she asked, snorting. "I'm surprised anything could pry you away from two naked women."
He laughed awkwardly. They had hooked up twice since the whole thing had finally come to a close. He was glad it hadn't gotten weird. It was obvious that they were friends, good friends and close friends, but it wasn't romance that got them naked and sweaty those times, just sexual attraction. "Couldn't sleep. Though I doubt I'll be here for long. I just...I don't know. Wanted to check on Hollenshead. Find you, see how you're doing...I'm restless," he muttered.
"Me too," she replied, then sighed. "I'm leaving tomorrow."
"Where are you going?" he asked.
She took a drink. "Back to Earth. I'm pretty much healed up. And I'm finding that...I can't idle for long. Sounds crazy. I was ready to sleep for a month. I mean I knew I'd have to get back into the shit, and soon, but I didn't think this soon. But I think...something broke in me. Somewhere on the moons of Jupiter, or maybe in Hell, something broke in me, and I can't go back. I can't sit still for too long. At the very least, I can't do it while they're still out there."
"I know how you feel," Jack muttered, staring at Earth through the glass. He uncorked the bottle and took a drink. "Gonna rest up a bit longer, do this media thing with the President, then figure something out with Jennifer."
"And Diaz? You a trio now?" she asked.
"I don't think so. I think Diaz is gonna bounce on us, too."
"Sorry for bouncing," Kyra murmured.
"Don't be. You're a warrior. We all are. It's what we do."
"We're also friends. And we've been through things...and come out the other side...that not a lot of other people have."
"Don't regret that we're splitting up again," Jack said. "We're demon exterminators. Hell Warriors. It's why we live. It's what we should do. What we must do. But we'll find moments like these, eyes in the storm, and we'll find each other again, and split off again, and that's...not a bad way to live, you know?"
"You're right," she said after a moment's contemplation. "It's a great way to live, actually. I used to feel so aimless...did I ever tell you about why I got shipped to the UAC?"
"No."
She frowned bitterly. "I killed a man. I killed a Marine. With my bare hands." Jack waited. She was frowning into her glass. "He raped a friend of mine. This young PFC. A tech who was more brains than brawn. It got swept under the rug. They didn't want another 'PR nightmare'. He was going to get shipped out to the UAC. I think he was also some politician's son. I don't know, I don't care. I killed him. I strangled him and then broke his neck. I didn't try to hide it. They still didn't want a PR nightmare, so they shipped me out to the UAC, who put me to work out in deep space, along the outer rim of the system..."
Jack waited, staring at her. Kyra looked at him finally. "I don't regret what I did. I'd do it again if I had to. I know how they are, men like him. He'd just do it again. And again. Easier even, if he was out there in the joke outfit of the fucking 'Space Marines'." A long moment went by. "I care about your opinion, Jack," she murmured.
"I trust you," he replied, "and I trust that you did the right thing. And honestly...I don't blame you for what you did. Not at all. Sometimes...the demons wear human skin. And they should be killed just as easily as those things that spilled in from another dimension."
She nodded, then drained the rest of her glass. "The point I wanted to make was...everything was so fucked before. There was no sense of purpose. There was no sense of a greater good. Just people, trying to do good things sometimes, but mostly doing bad things or just keeping their head down, in a chaotic universe. It's different now. We've all got something that is unabashedly evil to focus on. It took a literal apocalypse and almost literally demons from Hell to get most of us on the same page, but we're there. I don't know if it's better this way, it feels awful to even consider it, given all that's happened, but...I know that I prefer living this way. There's no more moral dilemmas, no more shades of gray, no more budget constraints or politics or backroom deals. There's just fight or die. There's just save the human race."
"I remember thinking something extremely similar," Jack said. "And...I basically feel the same way. It's how I felt. Everything was meaningless before now. But this? This matters. This is clear cut. It's just us and the demons. Winner take all, I guess. We don't have to argue with stupid fucks about obvious threats to the human race, or politics this, politics that, or greedy stockholders. Once we kill the demons, we can rebuild, and I am damn sure not going to let bullshit get in the way of any of the other things that were threatening Armageddon, if we're lucky enough to find a way out of this fucking nightmare," Jack said.
"Speaking of that. I finally got word on Anderson," she said. "I know you were asking."
"Is he dead?" Jack replied.
She nodded. "He's dead. But he set off the bombs. They didn't quite work. They didn't shut down the portal in Haydenfield, but they scrambled it for awhile. Which meant that the UAC was onto something. They're doing more research now, looking for a way to close down the portals. It isn't a permanent fix, but it'd be great to have the option. Maybe some kind of satellite network that can just close portals as they open? They're spit-balling a lot of stuff, and it's all getting greenlit because money doesn't fucking exist anymore."
They stopped talking after that, just nursing their drinks, staring out at the planet. It was calmer now. No more mushroom clouds at least.
"You'll come see us, before you leave?" Jack asked after awhile.
"Of course," she replied.
He got to his feet. "I should get back to bed...goodnight, Kyra."
"Goodnight, Jack."
He replaced the bottle and began walking back out, now a little pleasantly buzzed. There was a lot to do, for all of them.
But for now...
For now, they could rest.