It's the last chapter, my dudes!

E-DAY plus 15 YEARS, 5 WEEKS

[VNB, 0700 hours]

Baird woke before his eyes opened. There was a strange pressure on his chest, accompanied by a light scratching. He hoped it wasn't a stray Ticker about to explode, or a half-dead Heart Leech courtesy of Alex Brand, who'd done that one time to a creep who wouldn't stop calling her Foxy.

He cracked one eye open. The pressure was Sharon, sketching on a piece of paper and using his body as a desktop.

So many things happened inside him just then that he couldn't name them all.

After a second or two, Sharon noticed that his chest had stopped rising and falling. She looked up at him in alarm.

He let out the breath he'd unconsciously been holding. "Hi."

"Hey, sugar," she said. The smile-lines around Sharon's eyes deepened. She propped her elbows on the mattress and rested her face in her hands, just watching him. The longer she looked, the bigger his smile became. Then he noticed she was fully dressed.

She saw him looking and said, "I finished the chain hoists while you were sleeping." She bit back a smile. "You were pretty worn out."

Baird chuckled. "Yeah, I haven't had a workout like that in a very long time." He scooted up until he was sitting against the wall. "So, what are you drawing?"

Sharon wiggled into the crook of his elbow and drew the sheet up to their waists as she arranged the papers on his lap. She pointed out the pieces with the nub of artist's charcoal. "A weapons system for DENIS, to make him feel safer about Polyps. This, this and this are parts of a needle-point laser. I'm hoping it would pierce a Polyp's shell. They seem to explode as soon as the integrity of their carapace is broken, like the infected Imulsion in them is under intense pressure."

"Nice. I like it. DENIS will too. Oh!" Baird exclaimed, sitting up straighter and almost dumping Sharon out of his arms. "DENIS. He's been outside all night."

Sharon pointed at the waist-high window in the office door. Baird looked, and DENIS bobbed a little, waving one of his flexible clamps. Baird grinned at him and waved back. DENIS bobbed some more, and then floated out of sight.

Sharon lay her head on his chest and slipped an arm over his waist. She sighed happily. "The three of us, together again."

Baird squeezed her more tightly to him and rubbed her arm lying across his stomach. "Yeah, listen, uh ..."

Sharon tilted her head up at him. He swallowed.

"Um … maybe we don't tell people we're together for a couple of days?"

Someone else might not have noticed, but the slight movement of her bottom lip and left eyebrow telegraphed her hurt as clearly as if she'd shouted.

He grabbed on to her arm as if she were about to bolt. "It's not that I don't want to tell people," he assured her quickly. "I really, really do. But I'd like a couple of days to ourselves before people start to … you know."

A dark, possessive anger replaced the hurt on her face as she processed what he was asking for, and why. "Those 'people' are assholes. Just because they don't know you like I do –"

Baird tipped her chin up to kiss her forehead. "Yeah, well, it's not like I've given many of them an opportunity to know me. At least it won't be like before, when my family's history had a lot to do with it. This time it'll be because I've been such a dick to them."

She snorted a laugh. "Well," she said, "Cole and Bernie already seem to know that when you're being a dick, it's because you're upset about something, not just being mean for the hell of it. Everybody else will simply have to learn."

Baird almost dumped Sharon out of his arms again. "Bernie! Shit, I've got to get her bike down to the docks by oh-eight-hundred."

He popped out of bed and dressed hurriedly, Sharon handing him his items of clothing and armor in the correct order.

When they got downstairs, DENIS gently bumped against Damon's upper arm, and then Sharon's, like a cat greeting its people. Baird patted his head as he fitted the tac/com radio back into his ear. He saw that DENIS had draped his tactical belt over his toolbox and tidied the things they'd knocked off the bench last night.

Sharon grinned at the two of them. "Are you finally willing to admit again that he's got emotions?"

"No!" Baird was instantly horrified.

"Whoa, there. Why the strong reaction?"

"Don't say stuff like that out loud, Sharon." He lowered his voice as if anyone could hear them. "If Prescott thinks we've got an illegal AI, he'll have him destroyed."

DENIS shot up into the rafters and hid behind a giant metal I-beam.

"DENIS, pumpkin, come down here. Nobody's going to hurt you." Sharon sweet-talked him.

DENIS clicked several times, spelling out N-O.

Sharon sighed. "You scared him."

Baird strode over to Bernie's bike with a rag. "He needs to be a little bit scared. Prescott is a cold son of a bitch; there's ice water in his veins." He turned his head toward her as his hands ran over Bernie's engine automatically, checking the tightness of the various caps and bolts. "Sharon, Prescott doesn't care about individual people. He cares a whole lot about the human race, but one person, or five, or a hundred thousand? Prescott would sacrifice them all to ensure the species Homo sapiens survives." He straightened up, tossed the greasy rag into a bucket and muttered, "Pretty sure Chairman Dalyell didn't decide to push The Hammer's button all by himself."

Sharon spoke up into the rafters. "You hear that, honey? Daddy says stay away from Prescott. Don't even let him see you."

Baird's eyes widened. "Daddy ... oh, shit!"

Sharon lowered her eyes to him. "What?"

"We didn't use protection last night. You might already be ..." He didn't need to finish that sentence before it sank in.

They were both frozen for a long moment, eyes wide. Finally Sharon looked down at the concrete floor and dug the toe of one shoe into it for a few agonizingly long moments.

Then she glanced up at him through her lashes. "Would that be so bad?"

Before Baird could even breathe again, he had her seated on the workbench once more and they were kissing like their lives depended on it. Thoughts flashed through his mind like electric sparks from a severed cable. 'She still wants to have kids with me.' He drew her jean-clad knees up around his hips. 'A family …' A normal man wouldn't be turned on by the thought of a home life with the accompanying mountains of laundry and family arguments and whining kids wanting more allowance money and having to cook for several picky eaters every night, but Baird was hard as a rock. He fairly snarled, yanking her hips hard against him as though he could reach her through several layers of clothes. 'A family. My family. Ours.'

The tac/com beeped in his ear. "Corporal Baird, what's the status on those engine hoists? Did Mrs. Keller finish them?"

That dampened his libido like he'd gone for a polar swim. Sharon had been close enough to his ear to hear it, too, and she sighed, dropping her arms away from his neck. Baird took a moment to calm his heartbeat so he wouldn't sound too out-of-breath. He pressed the transmit button on his earpiece. "Three engine hoists, coming right up." He gulped back the last of his desire, and got down to business for the day. "You sending someone for them, or should I bring them over in the Packhorse?"

"I've got some men in the area who can help you load them into the Packhorse. They can be there in a few minutes."

"Roger that."

Sharon gaped, half-laughing.

"What?" he asked.

"They're in this area? If you hadn't answered he probably would have sent them over to knock on the door. And we would've been right in the middle of … y'know ..."

He chortled. "Probably a good thing we got interrupted at the start, then." He leaned in and nuzzled near her ear. "We're going to finish this 'conversation', though. Later."

"Later," she agreed, and ran a finger down the buttons on his shirt before he stepped back so she could hop off the workbench and unlock the door.

When Parry's three combat engineers arrived to load the chain hoists into the Packhorse, Sharon buzzed around chatting them up like her usual cheerful self, but Baird had to make a conscious effort to keep his face from forming a dopey, love-struck smile, and his eyes off her rear end.

A sudden thought occurred to him. 'Carmine. He's got nookie radar and will blurt it out like he did about Dom and Maria. I have to find him alone before that happens.'

"You guys all right here?" he asked when the last hoist had been pushed far enough into the bed of the Packhorse.

The third engineer dusted his hands. "Yeah, we're good. You want to drive them to the armory or should we?"

"You take it, I've got to return Bernie's motorcycle to her staging area at the docks."

"Shiny. What about you, Firecracker?" he asked Sharon, using Cole's nickname for her. "Coming with?"

Baird gave her a tiny nod, and she beamed. The engineers smiled back, no doubt captivated by the echo of girls they'd known in school. "You betcha!" she chirped. One gave her a hand up into the truck bed.

"See you at breakfast," Baird told her. She beamed again with a little wave.

Baird hopped on the bike and puttered out of the shop, but the engine wasn't quite loud enough to keep him from hearing the second engineer ask, "You actually like eating breakfast with that guy?"

Baird gunned the engine so fiercely that the bike threw up a rooster-tail of dirt on his way to the docks.
Bernie wasn't at her staging area yet – it was probably still too early – when he hopped off the bike and ran alongside it for a few paces as it slowed with his hand on the brake.

"Anyone seen Carmine this morning?"

A private - whose head he'd practically bitten off last week for stripping the bolt on a hatch cover – scowled at him. "Yeah, he's headed for the mess hall." The kid roughly handled some small wooden crates, grumbling almost inaudibly. "Delta always takes the good stuff first ..."

Baird was already on a mission or he would have responded to that. He took off at a trot, following the shortest route to the mess hall.

In less than a minute he saw that familiar armor and helmet in the distance. "Carmine! Yo, Carmine, hold up!" The private turned and let him catch up.

Carmine knew before Baird even opened his mouth. "Hey, congratulations, man! Who's the lucky lady?"

"Uh ... it's Sharon, actually."

"What, you and Sharon Keller? For real?"

Dammit, this was exactly the kind of thing he hated, and wanted to put off hearing for as long as possible. "Yes, for real, you jacka-"

"Hey, I didn't mean it like that, I'm just surprised you're into her. You know, after calling her a slut and a whore and a liar and so on."

That made Baird's chest burn like he'd eaten an entire bucket of habanero peppers. "Yeah, well, that's another thing I wanted to talk to you about. Because it wasn't true about Sharon, and, uh..."

Carmine shrugged. "And?"

Baird cleared his throat, suddenly uncomfortable. "Well, um..."

Carmine waited. Baird literally could not tell anything Clay was thinking behind those blue reflective lenses.

"I said those things about Sharon because I was mad at her, and because I can be a real dick when I'm mad."

Carmine chuckled. "Well, at least you're a self-aware dick."

Baird snorted, but was too nervous to actually laugh. "That's one way to put it. Anyway, besides clearing that up, I wanted to say that I didn't actually mean it about you, either."

There was an awkward pause.

"So, wait," Carmine asked, "you don't think I'm the 'camp whore'?"

"No."

"You didn't mean it when you said I was 'riddled with STDs'?"

"No."

"How about the time you told Sam that I had been 'ridden more times than the Tollen Ferry'?"

"No."

"And when you told Jace that I would 'frak anything that moves, including the tailpipe of an APC going fifty miles per hour', and-"

"All right, all right, I get it, okay? I was a jealous bastard after you hit on her at the bar, and I had no business passing judgment on your integrity just because you get a lot of tail - uh, I mean, a lot of admirers. All right? I'm sorry. I really am sorry that I thought those things about you, and I'm sorry I said them out loud."

"You know what? Apology accepted. Besides, I put Sharon in the Not Interested In Me category after the bar thing, so you never really had to worry about that anyhow."

"You have categories?"

"Yeah, four of them." He counted them off on his fingers. "Off Limits, Not Interested In Me, Has Potential, and Hell Yeah."

"That's .. surprisingly clinical. Anyway, I was wondering what you want in exchange for keeping the news about me and Sharon to yourself for a while."

"What?"

"Yeah, like, do you need something fixed, or made, or a favor, or -"

"Hey, I don't need payment to keep my mouth shut about my war buddies, I'm not y- uh..."

Baird raised an eyebrow. "You were about to say, 'I'm not you,' weren't you?"

"Maybe there's a few things I could work on too. I'll keep your secret, Baird. Don't worry."

He still couldn't quite believe it. "I'd think you'd want to shout it from the rooftops. With a megaphone."

"Well, I don't." Clay shrugged.

"I don't understand." Baird knew he shouldn't be looking a gift horse in the mouth, but the curiosity would eat at him for weeks if he didn't ask. "Why would you keep quiet for no reward?"

Carmine crossed his arms and cocked his helmet to the side thoughtfully. "Here's my price. Just tell me one thing: why do you want to keep it a secret?" Baird could almost hear the smirk even though he couldn't see it. "Because I'd think you'd want to shout it from the rooftops with a megaphone."

The frustration from the engineer's comment to Sharon pushed the words out before he could stop them. "Because nobody thinks I'm good enough for her, that's why! They think I'm beneath her, and as soon as everybody knows we're together, it'll be all 'What does she see in him?', and 'She could do better', and 'It'll never last,' and I don't want to frakking hear it, okay? I just want one goddamned week with her before everybody finds out and starts saying shitty things about me."

Carmine's entire body language changed. He uncrossed his arms and put a hand on Baird's shoulder. "Hey, Baird, listen." He shook Baird's shoulder very slightly. "You're a real asshole. But," he raised a finger before Baird could speak, "and I know this sounds like a contradiction: you're also a decent person. You are good enough for her, you're not beneath her, and she couldn't do better than you. And I'll keep my mouth shut for free, because you two deserve a little privacy until you're ready to go public."

"Um." Baird could only blink for a few moments. "Thank .. you?"

"Any time." Carmine's chronometer beeped. "Speaking of which, I have an appointment to make babies with a Hell Yeah before breakfast. Catch you later, Baird!" Carmine began to jog away.

"So you're not mad?" Baird called after him.

Carmine extended both middle fingers and held his arms straight out like an ice skater as he spun on his heel. "Look at all these fraks I give!" he crowed.

"Well." Baird said to himself. "That went better than I thought."

Vic was standing at the window, smoothing out his uniform's lapels the best that he could with no electric iron. "Huh."

"What?" Bernie sat barefoot on the bed, brushing out the cat-fur liners for her combat boots.

"Baird's an only child, right?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Someone should tell him he has a doppelganger."

"A what?" It was such an out-of-the-blue comment that she couldn't immediately remember the meaning of that Gorazni word.

"A body double. Look." He pointed at a distant figure. Vic's near vision had deteriorated with age, but his far sight was as sharp as ever. Bernie's eyesight was still almost as good, but she had to squint a little when she came to the window and peered far down into the long street.

"Vic, that is Baird."

"Bullshit. That kid's in his mid-twenties, tops."

"I'm telling you, that's Blondie." Bernie dropped her cat-fur liners on the floor and leaned halfway out the window, balancing on her bare feet.

Vic kept one eye on her, his hands poised to snatch her back from the windowsill if she so much as wobbled.

"Can't be," he continued. "Too young. And no goggles, see?"

Vic was hardly finished speaking when Sharon Keller popped out of an alleyway like a jack-in-the-box and brandished a set of goggles at the overgrown boy. He jumped a little when she appeared, but then gave her a wide, soft grin as he took the goggles from her. Their hands touched for far longer than was necessary to pass a simple object. Bernie stepped back from the window as Baird and Keller turned left toward the mess hall. Their upper arms were touching as they walked, and just before they moseyed out of sight, Baird threw his head back and laughed.

"Well, I'll be damned," Vic swore softly. "It is him. And he's got himself a little lady-friend."

Vic heard a strange choking sound behind him. He half-turned and his eyes widened in alarm. Bernie's face was scrunched up in a pained grimace, eyes watering, and she was fanning her face like she'd been sprayed with riot mace.

"Bernie!" Vic sputtered in alarm. He stepped toward her with his arms outstretched. Bernie retreated exactly the same distance and kept fanning her face. "Bern, what's wrong?" he pleaded. "Tell me what's wrong."

Bernie choked out one word: "H-happy."

"What?"

"H-happy." She hiccuped, still fanning.

Vic dropped his hands. "You're shitting me."

Bernie hiccuped, and blinked rapidly.

"This? This is what you look like when you're happy?"

Bernie's mouth quivered as she blew out a breath. She continued fanning her reddening face.

"Bern, the last time I checked you have a Locust kill count in the triple digits, have literally skinned two men alive, shoot feral cats for their fur, and this is what makes you cry?"

Bernie hiccuped again.

Vic sighed. "Mataki, what am I going to do with you, you impossible woman?" This time when he approached her, she let him take her in his arms.

"Th-this is so g-great," she stammered against his shirtfront. "It w-worked. It worked."

"What worked?"

"The pl-plan."

"Bernie, what plan?" Vic didn't mind a little display of softness from his beloved cast-iron bitch, but he was starting to get a wee bit frustrated with the lack of information, here.

"D-Dom and Cole and I were h-helping Baird get together with Sh-Sharon."

"Wait, you planned that?" He nodded at the window.

"I h-helped. I didn't think it would work so q-quickly. I thought it would al-al-alot more time." She snuffled against his shirt. "I'm so hap-" she hiccuped. "-happy."

Vic rubbed her back as she leaned against him. "Well, now I know how to cheer you up: just get one of your boys a girlfriend."

Bernie hiccuped out a laugh, wiping her eyes. "M-maybe you can help with Marcus and Anya, then. That would really make my day."

Vic actually smiled this time. "Well, Sergeant Mataki, I am happy to report that Fenix has spent every night for the past week sleeping in the Lieutenant's quarters."

Bernie's head jerked up so quickly she almost busted Vic's jaw with the crown of her head. Her eyes narrowed at him. "I swear to God, Vic, if you're yanking my chain..."

Vic held up his right hand in the symbol from his youth. "Scout's honor. It's the truth."

Bernie's face at rest had always had clean lines that reminded Vic of a stark but beautiful mountaintop. When she smiled, however … They were supposed to be on their way to prep another Stalk recon, but he allowed himself a few moments to bask in her glow.

But then her sunny smile became something more calculating. "That just leaves Cole and Sam."

"Oh, no." He pointed a commanding finger at her. "No. Absolutely not." He let go of her and retreated backward toward the doorway. Bernie began to stalk him with that glint in her eye. "No," Vic said, feeling an unfamiliar sense of panic. "I will not be roped into this little matchmaking drama you've got going on." An evil grin spread across Bernie's face as Vic put a night-table between them. "I flat refuse. I am a senior officer in the Coalition of Ordered Governments, and I will not be a party to -"

Bernie lunged at him.

Vic ran.

Fortunately for Cole, most of Delta was eating at the same table in the mess hall, accompanied by Maria and Sharon. Cole hooked a thumb over his shoulder as he sat down next to Baird. "I just saw the weirdest thing."

"Oh yeah?" Baird asked out of the side of his full mouth. Sharon snaked a strip of fake bacon off of his plate, and Cole saw Baird's eyes follow the motion, thinking Baird was going to snatch it back. But the corporal's eyes crinkled at the edges like he was amused.

'Interesting...' Cole thought before continuing his story. "Get this: I saw Hoffman running down a side street like a bat out of hell, with Bernie hot on his heels. It was wild, man."

"You're joking: Bernie was chasing Hoffman?" Sharon asked, leaning around Baird's back.

"Yup. Strangest damn thing I've seen all week. And they were really moving, too. The old man sure can pour on the speed when he wants to." Cole stroked his chin. "I wonder if I can get him to play wide receiver in the next Thrashball game..."

Dom spooned his applesauce onto Maria's plate. "Bernie's way faster, why hadn't she caught him already?"

"Oh, yeah, I forgot: for some reason she wasn't wearing any shoes."

Anya rested her chin on her folded hands."Very strange. Anything else?"

"Well, they were pretty far away and moving at a good clip, but I could hear Bernie yelling something about a plan, and Hoffman swearing a blue streak."

Marcus returned from the grub station with six mugs of that awful coffee substitute. He slid one each to the table's occupants, giving Cole his own cup before silently going back for more. Anya smiled down into her mug as she sipped it. 'Even more interesting...' Cole thought. 'I have to take notes for Bernie.'

Dom and Anya asked for more details, and as Cole answered with everything he could remember, he saw Baird scribble something down on a scrap of paper and slide it over in front of Sharon's tray.

It just looked like a complicated geometry equation to Cole, but Sharon's cheeks went pink and she snatched the scrap of paper off the table. Stop it, he saw her mouth at Baird, who grinned widely and laced his hands together behind his head.

'Well,' Cole thought, 'that's progress.'

He peeked at Sam across the room, and she quietly waved her fingers at him.

'The best kind of progress,' he thought.

#

THE END

#

Thanks for staying with me through thick and thin, everybody. I never stopped thinking about this story and how I wanted to finish it for you, even when I was too sick to write. As for the possibility of a Part Two … I have an entire outline of the plot for Gears of War 3 (yes, even Mission to Mercy), and an epilogue, but we'll see how my health cooperates. If it does get written, I think I'll call it Half Dead: Gun Shy. So be looking for that. I warn you, however: Part Two doesn't end as happily as Part One.

...hopefully it doesn't take 9 years to write...