The Corps of Discovery Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3: A multiverse series of alternate history

by James S. Peet

  Bill pulled the flare out of the pack and pulled the pin, holding the flare in one hand, and the striker cord in the other. As it became apparent that the plane was definitely seeking them out, he raised the flare above his head and pulled the cord. The flare shot up into the sky.

  In less than a minute, the plane flew directly over them, at least a thousand meters up. They watched as it droned on, then slowly banked and made its way back.

  Bill wasn’t sure if it was the smoke from the hobbit-hole’s chimney or the sheer excitement of being rescued, but his eyes were watering. He shouted, inarticulately, and he wasn’t the only one. Meri and Karen were also screaming, yelling, and crying.

  The plane flew over them again. This time, the wings waggled in recognition.

  Big sobs broke from Bill. Finally, the nightmare was almost over. Meri rushed over to him, hugging him and crying. Karen just stood there, racking big sobs coming from deep within her.

  As the plane banked again, they could see it climbing. Rather than cruise over them a third time, the Caribou circled above them, gradually gaining altitude. The rear cargo door opened, and soon a large object fell out of it.

  As the object fell, four appendages spread from its sides, resolving themselves into shrouded propellers. Bill recognized the object as a rescue flitter, a single-seat flying car with a litter under it, usually used to rescue injured ground survey Explorers.

  The three watched, mouths agape, as the flitter descended.

  With a cloud of dust bursting out from under it as it approached the ground, the flitter landed, not more than 20 meters from their location, facing up the slope.

  Not moving, the three watched as the top of the flitter opened, and a light-skinned brown man exited it, PDW in his hand.

  “Bill?” he asked. “Meri?”

  It took Bill a moment, but then he was rushing forward. “Jordan!” He embraced him as if his life depended on it. In a way, it did.

  Releasing him, Bill stepped back while Meri also hugged the young man. “Thank God you’re here,” she said, tears streaming down her face.

  Karen had just collapsed to sit on the ground, sobbing uncontrollably.

  “Christ almighty,” Jordan said, as Meri released her hold on him. Holding her at arm’s length and looking among the three Explorers, and then at Jack, still in his swaddling, he said, “We wrote you off months ago.”

  “Yeah, well, we don’t kill easy,” Bill said.

  “Hold on a sec. I gotta let the crew know what’s up.”

  Pulling a radio from his belt, Jordan called up to the craft above, “Romeo Zero One, Rescue Zero One, over.”

  “Romeo Zero One. Go ahead, Rescue Zero One, over.”

  “Romeo Zero One, be advised, I’ve got three crew members of Forty-Two Two down here.” Looking down at Jack, he continued, “Along with a fourth survivor, an infant. Over.”

  “Copy that, Rescue Zero One — four survivors, one’s an infant. Got names? Over.”

  “Bill Clark, Meri Lewis, and,” looking over at Karen, Jordan raised his eyebrows in question.

  “Karen Wilson,” Bill answered.

  “Karen Wilson, over,” Jordan said into the radio.

  “Confirming Clark, Lewis, and Wilson. What about Weaver, over?”

  Bill shook his head.

  “Negative on Weaver, over.”

  “Roger, negative on Weaver. Stand by.”

  “Damn, man. What the hell happened?” Jordan finally asked, looking at his former roommate. “We thought you were dead.”

  “Damned near,” Bill replied. “Somebody snuck an EMP bomb on our flight, causing us to go down in the Eurasian Alps. Meri, here,” he gestured to his wife, “and Ben Weaver managed to safely land us in a lake. We’ve been making our way home ever since.”

  “Fuckin’ GLF,” Jordan said, shaking his head. “Fuckers did a lot of damage. What happened to Ben?” he asked.

  “Shark attack in the Caribbean,” Bill said, his mind flashing back to that horrible scene.

  “What happened?” Meri asked, picking up Jack and holding him.

  By this time, Karen had gotten control of herself and joined the group, snot still running down her nose and tear tracks streaking through the dust of her face.

  “The Gaia Liberation Front decided to simultaneously attack the gates and every single survey we had running. They basically attacked us in force, killing a lot of good people, and shutting down gate operations for several months. We’re still trying to figure out everything they did. Luckily, most of them were killed, but we’ve still got a number in custody. Remember Brenda Lightfoot?” he asked Bill.

  Bill had to dig back into his memory, and then remembered the woman from Colville, a small town in central Washington State. He had met her his first week on Hayek, even before Explorer training began. A Native American who was a graduate of Washington State University.

  “Yeah, what about her?”

  “She’s one of them. Did a shitload of sabotage, including that Caribou incident of yours.”

  The incident took place during Bill’s Caribou transition flight, where somebody had sabotaged the plane causing a propeller blade to shear off and cut through the flight deck, decapitating the Instructor Pilot. Bill had to make an emergency landing, alone, supported only by another pilot on the radio. He still had nightmares about it, despite the counseling he went through after the incident. Like most Explorers, Bill had his own amount of post-traumatic syndrome disorder to deal with, and that was only the first instance.

  “What happened to her?” Meri asked. It was clear to Bill, from her tone, that his wife was royally pissed.

  “She’s in custody,” Jordan answered. Under his breath, Bill heard him mutter, “I hope that bitch hangs.”

  At that moment, Jordan’s radio sounded again.

  “Rescue Zero One, Romeo Zero One, over.”

  Jordan replied, “Go ahead Romeo Zero One, over.”

  “Rescue Zero One, we’re gonna RTB and see about getting a proper retrieval. We’ll drop some more supplies. Advise all to stay put. We’ll be back in less than forty-eight hours, over.”

  “Roger that, Romeo Zero One. Copy, supply drop and return in forty-eight.” Jordan looked up at the twin-engine plane as it approached at a lower altitude. Turning to the others, he said, “Right. Like I’m gonna trek several hundred miles when I could wait for a ride.”

  “Is that Brad on the other end?” Meri asked.

  “Yeah,” Jordan said. “He’s the one that actually identified you, using binoculars.”

  “Who’s Brad?” Bill asked.

  “Old friend,” Meri said with a smile. “We’ve known each other practically our whole lives, growing up on base. I helped him out once, years ago,” she said, cryptically.

  Clearly there was more to the story.

  Once more, the plane flew over them. This time, though, the object dropped was attached to a parachute that deployed soon after it left the aircraft.

  The plane waggled its wings once again, then turned west and headed toward the horizon.

  The parachuted bundle landed on the ground several hundred meters away. Jordan said, “Let me.”

  Climbing back in the flitter, Jordan took off and flew to the grounded bundle. In a couple of minutes, he had it secured in the litter and was back at the small makeshift encampment.

  He hopped out of the flitter. “Well, let’s see what they dropped off.”

  Lowering the litter to the ground, he extracted the bundle, which was over a meter and a half long and about half a meter in diameter. It was a container designed to carry supplies to be air-dropped.

  It opened up lengthwise; Bill saw a number of food packets. The ones on the top were the Corps-issued field rations. Field rations were similar to the U.S. Army’s HDRs, Humanitarian Daily Rations, with the meals and some sundries in vacuum-packed retort pouches rather than cans. One of Bill’s favorite sundries was a chocolate-covered coconut bar. Each field rat also came with a small cho
colate bar, specifically designed for the tropics so it wouldn’t melt in the tropical heat (or even in one’s mouth), crackers, and peanut butter. An accessory packet was included, with the most popular item in it being a packet of field toilet paper. Looking at the manna from heaven, Bill couldn’t remember the last time he’d had toilet paper. Geez, how many months has it been, he thought. While grass and leaves did the job, they certainly weren’t squeezably soft!

  “So, who’s this little guy?” Jordan asked, looking at Jack with a raised eyebrow.

  Standing up straighter, Bill said, formally, “Jack, meet Jordan Washington. Jordan, meet Jonathan David Clark, our son.”

  That caused both of Jordan’s eyebrows to rise, almost to his hairline.

  “Son, as in, you two?” he asked, gesturing to Bill and Meri.

  “Um, yeah,” Meri said. “What, you think we adopted him?”

  Everyone laughed, but the comment also reminded Bill of something. “Crap, I almost forgot. We’ve gotta quarantine this planet, it’s a Class II planet.”

  “What do you mean?” Jordan asked.

  “Class II, as in ‘already occupied by humans’ is what I mean,” Bill said.

  “You sure?”

  “Damned right he’s sure,” Karen said, speaking up for the first time since Jordan landed. “We’ve got physical evidence in the form of a spear point, and we saw a bunch as we left Gibraltar.”

  “Well, not a lot we can do until we’re back in touch with civilization,” Jordan said.

  “Guess you’re right about that. Hey,” Bill said, turning to the women, “how about we gather up our clothes so they don’t blow away?”

  Jordan helped collect the worn and ragged clothing.

  After extinguishing the now-unnecessary fires, the four sat down to enjoy lunch, the first in almost a year that didn’t require any of the three survivors to kill and clean it. Of course, Jack wasn’t interested in the food provided by the Corps.

  As they ate, Jordan caught them up on the news back on Hayek and in the Corps.

  “Matt finally proposed to Nicole,” he told them, referring to Matt Green, Bill and Jordan’s roommate from training. Matt was a Southern good ole boy from Memphis, Tennessee, and Nicole Andrews was a Kiwi from New Zealand. It was a wonder that the two could even communicate with their rather distinctive, and sometimes impossible to understand, accents.

  “About time,” Bill said. “I thought he did that the first week they met. Remember him serenading her in the Cave Bear Cave?” This was one of the outdoor beer gardens on Sacajawea Base that the roommates used to hang out at.

  The two men smiled with the fond memory of that evening. The strains of John Denver’s Follow Me passed through Bill’s mind, recalling that event.

  Jordan told them about the impact that the GLF had had on the Corps, base operations, and on Hayek in general. Along with the gates at Bowman Field, they had also managed to sabotage many gates operating between Hayek and Earth. Luckily, those were rapidly re-opened, and only had a minimal impact on Hayek’s economy. It was the gates between Hayek and the newer opened parallel planets that took a while. All surveys and explorations were halted until gate operations were back to normal.

  “Your dad ordered it that way,” Jordan said to Meri. It was clear he was a bit uncomfortable about it.

  “Dad always did put duty and the Corps before family,” Meri said, looking down at Jack, now feeding on her breast.

  “How’s Thep doing?” Bill asked, referring to their fourth roommate, Thepakorn Daeng, a tropical botanist, originally from northern Thailand.

  Jordan looked down. Finally, he looked up at Bill with a lost look and, almost in a whisper, said, “Dead.”

  Bill felt the shock run through him. “What happened?”

  “He was at one of the gates, actually going through it, about to go on a survey, when it fucking exploded.” Jordan looked away. Bill could see the anguish on his face. Jordan and Thep were close, much like Bill and Matt were, so he understood what the young Californian was feeling.

  “Geez. Sorry, dude.”

  “Yeah, well, that was, like, last year. Know what I mean?” Jordan replied, shrugging it off.

  Bill could see it still hurt Jordan. He glanced over at Meri; she saw too.

  “Anyhow, things are pretty much back to normal. The Commandant decided to re-open the gate to Planet 42, so here we are. They finished the Initial Survey months ago,” he said sheepishly, clearly expecting an outburst of anger from the three. “They found your plane, but without contact, decided not to do anything.”

  That got Bill thinking. “What were you doing in the plane? You’re a biologist, not an aerial surveyor.”

  “Yeah, well, when things went to shit, they did whatever they could to get things back together. We were a bit short on the whole manpower thing, thanks to the fuckin’ GLF. Lots of people killed and hurt in their attacks. Turns out that the one GIS class I took was enough for the Corps to consider me for aerial survey, so there I am, operating a geographic information system at a thousand meters, rather than collecting flora and fauna at ground level. Go figure.”

  Placing her hand on his knee, Karen said, “Well, I, for one, am happy as hell that you were in that plane. Thanks.”

  Bill didn’t think he’d ever see a black man blush, but he was proven wrong at that moment.

  Jordan, as a trained biologist, was an experienced ground survey crew Explorer, so sleeping in the wild on an unexplored planet was nothing new for him. What was new was seeing the survivors’ hobbit-hole set up, with spread-out bison hides serving as floor and blankets, and a fire going in the home-made fireplace.

  After lunch, Bill took Jordan around, showing him the canoe that had carried the crew over several river systems.

  “Hard to believe it’s still functional, after all the abuse we’ve put it through,” Bill said, as the men looked upon the beached canoe, its sail hanging limply down the mast.

  “Damn, man. How far you come in that thing?”

  “Beat me. At least several thousand klicks. Down the Ohio, up the Mississippi, and up the Missouri to here. And, I gotta say, I got no problem not going another klick in the damned thing.”

  “With any luck, you won’t have to,” Jordan said, rubbing his mustache. Bill remembered the last time Jordan did that, days before he was required to shave it off prior to beginning Explorer training.

  Bill realized just how much they had changed. Despite being in his early twenties, Jordan was looking older, with faint lines creasing his face, cutting down in vertical stripes on either side of his mouth. His hair was cut to regulation shortness, but the mustache, which had been rather faint when they first met, was fuller now, and clearly not regulation. Bill was also different. When he first met Jordan, he had the typical complexion of a western Washington resident, or, as he called it, the aqua tan. He was also clean-shaven and had short hair. Now, he was sunblasted and tan, with hair that hadn’t seen a barber in almost a year, hanging to his shoulders. He sported a full beard, albeit a bit scraggly, and a full mustache. Meri had recently told him that he had fine crease lines radiated from his eyes, a combination of squint and laugh lines. Had Bill thought about it, he doubted his own father, “The Colonel,” would have recognized him. Had he been able to look in a mirror, he probably wouldn’t be able to, either.

  As Jordan looked at the canoe, becoming somewhat introspective. “Whattaya think about bringing it back?”.

  “Bringing what back?” Bill asked.

  “The canoe. To put it in the museum.”

  “Hey, you want to carry it back, that’s fine by me, but don’t expect me to help. I’ll be damned glad to finally be rid of it.”

  Bill thought a moment longer. “Actually, if you really want a great museum piece, I think you oughta try and get the outrigger we used to sail across the ocean. We stashed it on the banks of the New River near Pamlico Sound.”

  Jordan turned to Bill. “Y’know, that would be freakin’ amazing. A
in’t nobody else in Corps history done anything that epic. Not even Janice Goodland. When we get back, be sure to give me the coordinates, and I’ll see what I can do. Class II planet or not, that’s something to consider.”

  “Deal,” Bill said.

  Two days later, another twin-engine aircraft came into sight, from the direction the Caribou had departed. It was one of the heavy-lifter cargo planes in the Corps’ inventory, a C-123 Provider. The fire was going, and since it was no longer an emergency, Bill didn’t order two more fires established. The four adults watched as the plane came close, eventually passing over them, wings waggling in recognition.

  Circling back, it came closer to the ground, eventually running parallel to the river at the top of the bluff, a bare ten meters above the ground, the cargo ramp in the back down. It was operating barely above stall speed. As it roared near them, Bill saw a parachute emerge from the back, pulling an object out of the plane.

  The parachute yanked it out of the plane, and the short drop to the ground meant it didn’t spend too much time in the air. Bill recognized the method as a low-altitude parachute extraction. He suspected there would be more.

  The object landed in a puff of dust, even on the grassy prairie, the special pallet collapsing under the impact. Bill knew from experience that the pallet was mostly heavy-duty cardboard, designed to take the force of the impact and collapse, preserving the integrity of whatever it carried. That object turned out to be a rubber bladder, large enough for several hundred gallons of water or fuel. Being yellow, Bill suspected it was for diesel.

  A second parachute emerged, this one with a small bulldozer, configured on the same type of pallet.

  “They’re gonna build an airfield,” Meri said, upon seeing the second extraction.

  Bill put two and two together. One bulldozer plus fuel, plus whatever other equipment the plane would drop, meant one airfield suitable for a STOL — a Short Take-Off and Landing plane. This meant they intended to bring in one of the STOL planes, like the DHC-4 Caribou that found them, to extract them.

  A third parachute dropped from the rapidly departing plane several hundred meters away. Bill couldn’t see what the object was, but he suspected it was a road roller.