As promised, within the hour the gate opened, and the Trekkers, along with their canoe (carried by other Explorers) and the Commandant, crossed back into Hayek. Immediately after they crossed over, a caravan of trucks crossed into Planet 42.
“Going to help evacuate,” Lewis explained, as the gate shut down, leaving them on the tarmac of Bowman Field on Hayek.
47
After passing through the gate, the Trekkers were once again subjected to a large crowd, with banners saying “Welcome Home Trekkers” and “Welcome back Meri,” among others. It seemed as if the entire population of Sacagawea Base was present. It wasn’t just the Explorers, but their families, too. Thousands packed the small airfield.
Probably most important to the families was to see Explorers making it home after being lost off-world for so long. Their husbands and wives were doing the same thing; seeing proof that one could survive such a trek brought them hope for their own loved ones.
There was a small stand set up near the gate, clearly for a bout of public speaking. Bill knew he wasn’t up to the task. Hell, I almost failed Public Speaking in high school I was so afraid to talk. Fortunately, it appeared he didn’t have to.
Commandant Lewis climbed the few steps up to the platform and approached the microphone. The cheering crowd finally started to quiet.
“I want to thank all of you who showed up today. It means a lot to our three Trekkers right now,” he paused for a second, “I mean, our four Trekkers. Can’t forget my grandson,” he added with a smile.
“Anyhow, I’m sure most of you are aware of just how difficult it is for someone who’s been on a trek to re-assimilate back into society. And, I’ve got to say, I don’t recall any other time when the time or distance on a trek was as long as these three Explorers experienced. Keeping that in mind, I’m sure they’d appreciate it if you gave them a little space for the next couple of days.
“Once they’re civilized, we’ll bring them back for a proper introduction,” he said with a chuckle. The crowd reciprocated with their own chuckles and soft laughter.
Turning a little somber, he then said, “And we’ll also be having a memorial service for the Explorer who didn’t return, Ben Weaver. The time and place will be announced in The Explorer and via the various news outlets and user lists.”
Looking over at Bill, Lewis asked, “Anything you want to add?”
Bill started to shake his head but then felt a nudge in his ribs. Meri nodded and gestured to the podium. Bill’s eyes went wide with fright. His wife nodded again, saying, “They deserve to hear from us.”
Bill reluctantly climbed the podium.
“And don’t show any fear,” he heard Meri say on his way up the steps.
Yeah, right, he thought as he stepped onto the podium platform.
As he approached the microphone, he didn’t quite know what to say.
“Hi,” he started off, too a ripple of laughter.
“I’m not really good at public speaking,” he began, “but I just wanted to say thanks to all those who stood by, waiting for us, and especially those who rescued us.”
He paused for a moment to collect his thoughts, then resumed. “I’m glad we’re here. But one of us is missing. If you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you took a moment to honor our friend and fellow Explorer, Ben. Ben, along with my wife, Meri, saved our lives. Our plane was sabotaged, and if it hadn’t been for his flying skills, we would have crashed and died. Instead, he put us down in one piece. We lost Ben shortly after crossing the Atlantic. Please, let’s give Ben a moment of silence.”
Bill bowed his head. He wasn’t particularly religious, but he did believe in honoring those who deserved it.
After about thirty seconds, Bill spoke once more. “Thank you. Ben would have appreciated this.”
Bill could feel his eyes smarting, and wiped them with his hand.
“Thank you,” he said again, leaving the podium and descending to the safety of his wife.
After the little ceremony, Bill joined the others at a couple of jeeps waiting to transport the Trekkers home. Karen came over to Bill and Meri, gave each of them a hug, and said, “Thanks. I owe you two, big time.”
“Yeah, well, I think it’s mutual,” Bill replied.
Meri nodded in agreement. “Forget about us. Go spend time with the fam. You’ve spent enough time with us.” Karen smiled, turned, and headed off to rejoin her husband and son.
Lewis ushered them over to one of the jeeps and into the back of while he climbed into the passenger seat. Bill and Meri tossed their packs on the floorboards. He and Meri still held onto their rifles, as befitted Explorers, and were still wearing their survival vests and belts. As the driver started the vehicle, Lewis informed the young couple that they would be staying with him until things straightened out.
“Your apartment was given to another couple a month or so after you were reported missing,” he said. “The Corps actually brought all your personal stuff over to me.” He turned back toward the front of the jeep, obviously lost in thought. Bill could only imagine what was going through his mind, thinking about his only child lost on an unexplored planet, thousands of miles away, and nothing he could do to facilitate a rescue.
Turning back to the couple, he said, “It’s all still boxed up. I wasn’t sure what to do with it.” It was obvious he struggled with that memory.
Meri smiled, leaned forward, and gave her dad a peck on the cheek. “We’ll figure it out. Besides, it shouldn’t take more than a day for us to get another apartment.”
“Nonsense,” Lewis said. “Just stay with me for a bit. There’s no rush, and the Commandant’s quarters are big enough for all of us, as you well know.”
Bill wasn’t sure how that would work out, but if it was something Meri wanted, he wasn’t about to argue.
They pulled up in front of the Commandant’s quarters. The building was similar to the board and batten cabin that Bill had lived in while going through training. Of course, befitting his position as Commandant of the Corps, this building was bigger than the cabin on Jaskey Lane, about twice as big.
Lewis hopped out of the front seat. “Here. Hand me a pack or two.”
Bill grabbed the pack in front of him and handed it over to Lewis. It wasn’t as heavy as it had been. There was no food and a lot less ammunition than when they started.
Meri climbed out of the other side of the jeep holding on to Jack and her rifle. Bill grabbed her pack and got out.
The driver offered to carry equipment up to the house, but Lewis told him not to bother. “Not a whole lot to carry.”
The driver nodded, then shook Bill and Meri’s hands. “A real honor. Welcome home.” Then he hopped back into his jeep and sped away.
Bill still wasn’t used to the whole hero-worship thing. As far as he was concerned, they were just lucky. Hell, if it hadn’t been for Ben and Meri getting us down, Karen leading us across most of the planet, and Meri’s survival skills, we wouldn’t be alive. What the fuck did I contribute?
Meri opened the front door and stepped in like she owned the place. In a way, she did. She had spent a number of years living there when Lewis first became Commandant, not moving out until she joined the Corps and started training. She even lived there while attending Hayek University in nearby Milton, the capital of Hayek.
Lewis followed her, then Bill closed the door and set Meri’s pack down next to his, which Lewis had deposited on the foyer floor.
Meri had stopped and was slowly turning in a circle, looking around at the familiar settings. Bill had been to the Commandant’s Quarters on several occasions.
“So, I’m thinking the guest room might be better for you three,” Lewis said.
“Yeah, I don’t think my old bedroom would really work,” Meri said with a grin. “Kinda small.” Bouncing Jack in her arms, she said to him, “So, wanna check out the new digs? You know, you’re lucky. Grandpa wouldn’t let me go in there when I was a kid, but here you are, about to stay there.” J
ack just drooled.
“I’m not saying you were a holy terror,” Lewis said, “but, you were. Couldn’t let you go in anywhere civilized.”
Meri stuck her tongue out at him.
“C’mon,” she said to Bill.
Bill grabbed both packs and followed Meri down the hall, past a set of stairs, and turned right into a room big enough to be called a suite. They entered a sitting room first, where Bill plopped the packs down on the floor.
Off to one side was a bedroom, and he could see a bathroom attached to it. Large windows allowed Hayek’s sunshine to enter, creating a warm environment.
Meri went into the bedroom, then came back, handed Jack to Bill, and gave her dad a hug.
“Where did you get the crib?” she asked.
“The attic,” was his response.
“Is that my old crib?”
“Yep. Once I found out that the sole infant on the trek was yours, I radioed ahead and had Janice Goodland dig it out for you. That okay?”
“Yes. Most definitely, yes.”
Bill went in and saw the crib. Next to it was a changing table, and under it was a stack of cloth diapers. “Hey, real diapers.”
Meri came back in with a great big smile plastered across her face. “Great. That means I’m no longer the lone diaper changer.” Turning to Bill, she said, “Guess what?”
“Don’t need to guess. Already know what you’re gonna say. Okay, show me what I need to know before he has another blowout.”
Before Meri could do so, the doorbell rang. Lewis said, “Excuse me,” and left the two alone in the small quarters with Jack.
Bill found a small bar and had decided to fix a drink. He opened the cabinet. “Hey,” he called, “there’s some Irish Mist here. Want a glass?”
“You sure you’re willing to share?” Meri asked, laughing. Ever since their first survey, where the traditional bottle was opened upon returning to base, Bill had become hooked on the whiskey and honey mead liqueur.
“Why not? I’m not paying for it.”
He filled two glasses. Before he could hand one to Meri, her father appeared at the door to their quarters. “Bill, there’s a visitor for you.”
Lewis stepped aside and in strode an older version of Bill, one with salt and pepper hair and a practically white goatee.
It took a second for Bill to realize he was looking at his father, “The Colonel.”
“Dad?” he asked, handing both glasses of Irish Mist to Meri without conscious thought.
“Bill.” His father came over and shook Bill’s hand. Bill stared at him, stunned.
Letting go, his father stepped back. “Damn, it’s good to see you, son. Look at you! You look like a man, now!”
Bill felt uncomfortable. Perhaps it was because he was a man, proven in the wilds of Zion and Planet 42; perhaps it was because his father was saying that in front of his wife; or maybe it was because, in all his life, his father had never praised him nor shown him any affection, especially after his mother had died when Bill was six. Bill was still in shock just seeing his father, whom he had last seen on Earth just before joining the Corps.
Confused, he asked, “Dad, what are you doing here? I didn’t think the Hayek government let military officers come to Hayek.”
“They don’t,” “The Colonel” said. “But they don’t stop civilians from crossing over. I retired shortly after Jack,” he gestured to Jack Lewis, “told me that you were MIA and presumed dead. On top of losing your mom, that pretty much took the wind out of my sails, so I retired and decided to migrate. I would’ve been here earlier, but I wasn’t near a phone or the internet for the past couple of days.”
“Sorry I didn’t tell you beforehand, Bill,” Lewis said. “I wasn’t sure where your dad was and wanted to surprise you.”
“Well, that you did,” Bill said.
“Crap, where are my manners? Dad, I’d like you to meet my wife, Meri. Meri, my dad, David.”
Meri went up to Bill’s dad, placed her hands on his shoulders, leaned in and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Glad to finally meet you, sir. You raised one hell of a son.”
“Yep, I think so, too,” “The Colonel” agreed.
“Oh, yeah, and this is our son, your grandson,” Bill continued, turning just enough that Dave could see Jack’s face. “Jack, meet your grandfather. Dad, meet your grandson, Jonathan David Clark.”
The next couple of days were mainly spent relaxing in the Commandant’s quarters, with occasional forays into the wilds of civilization. It didn’t take too long to get used to people and modern amenities again. To Bill’s surprise, he found the hardest thing about adjusting to being back on Hayek was not having to carry his rifle all the time. That and not having to be on full alert with full situational awareness.
Both grandfathers spent as much time with them, and Jack, as possible. Bill’s dad had more free time, so he was around more than Meri’s dad, who still had to run the Corps.
On the third day back, Bill, Meri, and Karen began the process of debriefing. The three presented themselves at a small room in the terminal at Bowman Field, wearing their uniforms. Above the left chest pocket were ribbons indicating the medals they had been awarded before their final survey. Bill and Meri each had a single ribbon representing a Survey Medal, indicating that they had completed a survey. Karen had the same, but hers also had three small metal pine cones on it, indicating that she had been on fifteen surveys. Each pine cone meant that the Explorer had been on five surveys. An acorn would have indicated a single survey. Karen also wore a Purple Heart ribbon, meaning that she had been injured in the line of duty during a past survey.
For what seemed like days on end, the three would meet with a panel of veteran Explorers, one of whom was Janice Goodland, the lead instructor of the Corps’ Survival Training Program. Goodland was quite the character, a survivor of a trek when she was doing surveys. Missing her left arm from just above the elbow, she also had a hideous scar that ran down the left side of her face from the edge of her eye to her jawline. This was partially covered by long, silver-streaked black hair.
The three learned that none of the three Monarchs assigned to survey Planet 42 returned. Their plane, 42/2, was discovered intact; 42/1 wasn’t. It was presumed that the crash killed all aboard, though it was possible that the crew parachuted to safety and were currently trekking to the Initial Point. Since the plane had gone down in the Sudanian Savannah, just north of the Guinean forest belt south of the Sahara Desert, the Corps still held out hope. The trio was told that with their rescue, the Corps was going to do a more thorough search using a Monarch, but if nothing was found in the next couple of weeks, they would call it off. “If they’re out there,” Janice said, “we suspect they’re doing the same thing you did, trekking across Ti’icham. In the meantime, we’re sending a crew out to recover the plane.”
There was no sign of 42/3. The Corps had determined that it had possibly gone down somewhere over the South Atlantic. The Corps considered the possibility of survivors low to nonexistent.
Sometimes all three would be in interviewed in the same room with the same panel, and sometimes they would individually meet with different panels. The whole purpose was to extract as much information from the three survivors to help future Explorers.
The first topic of discussion was the final flight. The panel focused on two issues. First, why the plane went down; and second, how they managed to safely land, particularly in an area surrounded by mountains.
Meri explained about the EMP bomb, and how it destroyed all their electronics.
“How did you know it was an EMP bomb?” asked a panelist.
“That’s all it could’ve been,” Meri said. “What other kind of device could possibly have fried every unprotected electronic device in the plane? All our tablets were fried, too. The only devices not destroyed were the two protected tablets in the Faraday cage.”
“Could the electrical damage have come from a natural event, such as a solar flare, a coron
al mass ejection, or possibly a sprite?” another panelist asked.
It took Bill a second to remember what a sprite was — an electrically induced luminous plasma that developed above cumulonimbus clouds in the upper atmosphere. If it struck a plane, it could do electrical damage similar to what the Monarch experienced.
“Definitely not,” Meri said with authority. “First, any solar flare or CME would have caused some pretty major auroras, and we never saw any during our time in Eurasia, and somebody was on watch at night at all times. As to the sprite, we were above clouds, but nobody reported anything. And besides, a sprite would’ve only damaged the Monarch’s electronics, not our personal tablets.”
Bill spoke up. “I have to agree. My tablet was in my cargo pocket, and it got fried.”
“So, assuming this EMP bomb exists and did the actual damage, where is it?”
“It should be still at the crash site,” Meri answered. “If I recall correctly, once I pulled it out of the plane and showed the others, we just tossed it aside. It’s most likely at the spot where we camped.”
Pulling up an aerial image of the lake that 42/2 was still floating on, they were asked to identify their campsite.
Bill pointed. “Right here. If anything’s left, it’s gonna be there.”
“Isn’t this where you found the artifacts?”
“No, that was on the other side of the lake,” Meri said, indicating where she and Ben had found the point.
The discussion then turned back to the “supposed” EMP bomb. Meri was asked why it wasn’t found during a pre-flight inspection. She explained that the bomb was actually hidden aboard the plane in an area not likely to have been included in any inspection.
“Do you look in every hanging locker when conducting a pre-flight inspection?” she asked the panelists. They had to agree they didn’t, but it looked like that was about to change, much like how the inspection procedure changed after Bill’s sabotage experience during flight transition training.
The Corps of Discovery Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3: A multiverse series of alternate history Page 52